COLONIZING THE GAZA STRIP idea by

COLONIZING THE GAZA STRIP
two phases of governance: a critique of the idea of state
by
Philip Rizk
“Any historical narrative is a particular bundle of silences.”
- Michel-Rolph Trouillot
“What is required, in my view, is a working through of the idols, striking them, as Nietzsche
might put it, with a hammer not in order to smash them, but to make them sound, and
resonate, and divulge their own hollowness… That ignorance, a certain kind of willful
unknowing, is central to the concept of landscape, seems undeniable.”
- W. J. T. Mitchell
INTRODUCTION
“All communities are ‘countries of words’ insofar as the rituals of
inscribing borders, picturing territories and populations, and thematising issues salient to
those terrains and the communities believed to occupy them occur within discourse. In both
oral and literate societies, the community is not a ‘thing’ in itself but a way of speaking, and
thinking, about others who are ‘like us.’”
- Glenn Bowman, “A Country of Words”
Over the past four years of consistent engagement with the “Palestinian-Israeli” conflict I
have come to realize that in more ways than one this is not the conflict that it seems to be. For
one, this is not so much a conflict between “Palestinians” and “Israelis”- both modern
constructed classifications- so much as the imposition of one way of life, limited to a
privileged few- on various planes- at the cost of others. Only the details within this narrative
are unique to the land called “Palestine” and “Israel,” the wider dynamics are mirrored in
many places across this globe. In this trend, the path of “progress” pushes aside
“backwardness,” the industrial plantation battles the family farm, the “modern” city seeks to
replace the “traditional” village, “private property” is enforced over and against shared or
collective ownership, “democratic” forms of governance are deemed to replace clan and
religious structures. Many of these tropes can be identified in the rhetoric of a “nation-state”
project. If this is the case, then the deemed conflict between religions- Judaism and Islam-,
between two peoples- “Palestinians” and “Israelis”- are only popular containers amongst a
wider set of conditions that formulate this conflict: deeply shaped by a global hegemony of
the dominating economic core over its periphery.
The process that has made possible this deemed “conflict in the Middle East” is rooted in a
tradition of colonialism, more specifically settler-colonialism, and is conditioned further by
its placement in the chronological shadow of the Second World War and widespread
persecution of Jews. I want to shine as if with a flashlight on a “dark” corner of this narrative
to maybe hear a perspective not usually highlighted. In “Discourse On Colonialism,” Aimé
Cesaire points out that these ghastly acts of destruction of human life were nothing new in the
memory of our human story. Their prevalence depended on whose memory you sought out.
The same ordered acts of exploitation, torture and cruel death implemented on Jews in the
20th century had been in practice by Europeans seeking “divinely ordained” expansion from
their European sanctuary since the 16th Century. Here one society’s set of principles of order,
wiped out that of another. The European perpetrators considered violence a legitimate means
to their “civilizing,” “benevolent” acts. Nazi Germany brought these violent habits back to the
continent of its origin. The “developed” world stood aghast- having never witnessed these
practices before its very eyes. Subsequently, Adolf Hitler became a trope of a man of monster
qualities, ignoring the fact that his many ideological forebears escaped such judgment by
simply keeping these “civilizing” methods out of site of those in whose name they were
carried out. Maybe we should keep shining the flashlight around.
The Zionist project bears the mark of such a colonial tradition. Though the times have
changed and with them the rules set about by an ever more intertwined world. Exploitation,
torture and death continue to be practiced in this tradition of colonialism, though in the rubric
of the more sensitized manner of our times. At this level of baseness, the performance of
comparison between various moments of the colonial doesn’t serve its usual function of
explication and would only trivialize the said acts. In the human past a process of ebb and
flow of kingdoms and empires was the norm. In recent times these kingdoms are attempting
to warrant the durability of their rule by more mechanized processes, painting their dominion
as eras of incomparable “peace” and “justice.” This study is a critique of the unequal nature
of this process with its logic of the modern nation-state and all that entails regarding a legal
regime and an economic and politico-moral imaginary.
1
The “Gaza Strip” is a constructed categorization much like “Israel,” “Palestine,” “Europe,”
the “Orient” or “Occident.” I will limit the bulk of my analysis to the geographically invented
space of the “Gaza Strip,” which like so many geographical categories- was brought about by
violence. In the course of searing its geographical and historical landscape, the Zionist project
would introduce the Gaza Strip as a globally established category proving that, “[n]aming is a
powerful weapon of the cartographic propagandist.”1 In 1947 the Israeli military plan D
entailed direct orders for its army to empty Arab villages of their inhabitants, leading to the
forced expulsion of over 600 villages and their over 700,000 inhabitants.2 Zionist military
orders sought to ascertain that no written traces remain in order to undermine the project’s
“legibility” in the historical archive.3 Following the ethnic cleansing, the fleeing inhabitants
were spatially ordered into refugee camps and proximate cities and countries. Within the
historic lands of “Palestine” the Zionists divided remaining exiled Palestinians between two
new geographical entities, the “West Bank” and the “Gaza Strip.”4 Within a matter of weeks
over 250,000 refugees were repatriated in a newly demarcated space: the Gaza Strip.5 What
occurred during those years of population relocation followed by an Egyptian administration
followed by Israeli rule of the Gaza Strip is outside the scope of this thesis and has been well
documented elsewhere.6 Many dimensions of Gaza’s social, political and geographic
landscape would be altered significantly following Israel’s annexation in 1967.
I will address two different phases of governance of this discursive spatial and enclave. In
chapter one, I will highlight the Zionist projects razing of the land called Palestine as a
prelude to assessing the reshaping of landscape under the governance of two rivaling
Palestinian parties. Palestinian politically driven transformation in time and space cannot be
assessed in isolation of the initial colonial Zionist re-ordering. Chapter two takes into its
scope the post-Oslo era starting in 1994 until the Hamas takeover in June of 2007. Here I will
highlight Fateh’s re-ordering of the Palestinian imaginary and refashioning of space in the
Gaza Strip. In chapter three, I will focus my analysis on the period following Hamas’ taking
power after being denied its legitimate claim to control. I will look closely at how these two
political movements transformed themselves during their transition from emphasizing
liberation struggle to aspiring to governance.
Though these divisions follow common political markers the three historical phases I will
highlight are deeply intertwined. Thus, while Fateh did receive partial authority following the
Oslo accords the Zionist entity maintained the same control over borders, sea and airspace
since 1967. Meanwhile, Fateh though losing parliamentary elections in 2006 held onto its
control of security forces until June 2007. Hamas meanwhile has internal jurisdiction within
the Gaza Strip since June 14 2007, yet remains constrained by Israeli control of borders,
airspace and sea as well as Fateh’s influence from the West Bank where Hamas activists are
arrested and tortured.
I realize the danger of limiting my scope of analysis to the Gaza Strip and thereby risk the
contiguity of the remaining “Palestinian Territories.” I will limit my study in this manner
initially due to the need to bracket my study and the limited study of Gaza. I consider my
work a thought experiment that does not so much seek to suggest alternatives to the searing
transformations that have occurred but mark possible moments of a different imaginary. My
analysis of Palestine in the first chapter and then the focus on the Gaza Strip in the second and
third chapters will lead to a broader analysis in the concluding chapter where I move beyond
the Gaza Strip and Palestine as my unit of analysis to speak of the global economic periphery
1
Monmonier, 1991: 110.
Pappe, 2006: 86ff.
3
Hamdy, Iman. 2008; Scott, 1998: 80.
4
This arrival of thousands of exiled refugees created unprecedented divisions between refugees and citizens. Post1967 the Israeli occupation occasionally even received support among landed Palestinian elite who opposed the
‘unrest’ created by refugees (Lesch, 1985: 55).
5
Roy, 1995: 13.
6
Pappe, 2006; Morris, 1987; Feldman, 2008.
2
2
as a whole. Furthermore, my spatial bracketing aids in revealing the discursive nature of all
spatial categorizing, not merely nation-state containers. I will seek to sound out the process of
invention of this space- only one small corner of what Conrad called “the dark places” of the
“Orient.” In my doing so I have found that the nature of “darkness” comes not from a claimed
inherent “evil,” backwardness or unknown nature. Rather, I recognize an imperialist desire to
portray these spaces as such, while keeping in the dark, acts of imperial re-mapping and
capitalist exploitation in the spirit of European colonialism.
In concluding my introduction I want to add a short note on language. As much as I will be
addressing the discursive nature of territorial containers and their commensurate national
narratives I want to acknowledge the discursivity of language itself. As Ferdinand de
Saussure posited language is made up of linguistic signs that are a “form, not a substance,”
their meaning being only “contrastive, relative and negative.”7 I find difficulty in using words
such as “Palestine,” “Israel,” “justice” or “legal” in light of the realization of their discursive
nature. Likewise, it is difficult to recount, to write the past using words. So when I am
assessing history- the act of looking back- I must hold an a priori stance, to look with
humility, with the acknowledgement that I am looking through my own (subjective) eyes, and
through the interpretive eyes of authors and story tellers- of “history.” A vital question one
must ask of historiography is why write? What intensions and desires hide behind the act of
leaving behind the document? Hegel considered the “state” as the principle actor in “the
production of such history in the very progress of its own being.”8 I will attempt to write not
on behalf of the state- or a people- but the multitude. I will aim to undermine the setting in
stone the justification for the longevity of the “state” and question the givenness of the
commensurate relationship of state and history. My first act in writing this essay is to bow to
its discursive nature. I seek to depict the process- through an archeology of space and time- of
how narratives and spaces become shrouded in a heart of darkness. In the spirit of Edward
Said and joining Paul Rabinow with the aim to “anthropologize the West: show how exotic its
constitution of reality has been; emphasize those domains most taken for granted as universal
(this includes epistemology and economics); make them seem as historically peculiar as
possible.”9
These notes will not follow a strict chronological order, as I pick and choose from various
sources- oral and written. I will write a partial text with the aim of giving a partial voice to
what I deem as silenced.10 I will shine my light on non-events, thereby naming them as
events. The neglect of these realities have brought the inhabitants of the “Gaza Strip”- and
“Palestine”- to their present captivity: a captivity in time and space.
7
Saussure, 1983: 157; 165.
Cited in White, 1990, 29.
9
Paul Rabinow, 1986: 241 cited in Escobar, 2005: 158.
10
Whitelam, 1996: 36.
8
3
Chapter 1:
THE ZIONIST RAZING OF PALESINE: AN ORDERING OF TIME AND SPACE
“[L]andscape is quite capable of becoming an idol in its own right- that is, a potent,
ideological representation that serves to naturalize power relations and erase history and
legibility.”
-W. J. T. Mitchell, Landscape and Idolatry: Territory and Terror
“The very thing that renders the landscape biblical, its traditional inhabitation and cultivation
in terraces, olive orchards, stone buildings and the presence of livestock, is produced by the
Palestinians, whom the Jewish settlers came to replace. And yet the very people who cultivate
the ‘green olive orchards’ and render the landscape biblical are themselves excluded from the
panorama. The Palestinians are there to perform the scene and then disappear.”
- Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, The Mountain: The Principle of Building in Heights
“The spatial practice of a society secretes that society’s space; it propounds and presupposes
it, in a dialectical interaction… From the analytic standpoint, the spatial practice of a society
is revealed through the deciphering of its space.”
- Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space
The deep-seated conflict over ‘Palestine’ is rooted in a debate over beginnings. In order to
start unpacking the debate do we ‘return’ to the ‘events’ of 2000, 1967, 1948, 1936 or earlier?
I want to propose another starting point. I will not begin with a time marker or event,
moreover rather than having people as the only ‘subjects’ at our starting-point I want to
suggest a wider inter-subjectivity.11 I will try and approach the history of Palestine by writing
history other-wise.12 Towards this end I suggest making the relationship between human and
land my starting-point. Hereby I hope to overcome the trend of making the human- whether in
terms of a liberal individualistic conception or as the discursive collective- the center of
analysis. For “[e]verything comes up out of ground- language, people, emu, kangaroo, grass.
That’s Law.”13 I will take a relationship as my point of departure.14 This relationship entails
the landscape of a space- demarcated by many names over the years we have record of itwith animals, flora, rocks and humans among other things. My meanderings will take me
down a path of cross-pollinations of history- as History- and memory, both collective and
individual. Towards these ends I will use Lefebvre, Harley, Gregory and Weizman as
interlocutors in the explorations of space and its transformations. Here I will take into
consideration that the “organization of space… can be conceived of as a text,” and that “as
such, it “talks about” or “works over” states of affairs which are imaginary.”15 I will assess
the ramifications of these “words,” which- like any words- have imbedded in them a
potentially violent, destructive force. Following, I will engage Whitelam, Bowman and
Swedenburg in assessing the narration of Israel as a Zionist nation-state construct. These
explorations will lead me to identifying the Zionist reformulation of a space as a liberal state
of exception that engenders an avowed divinely ordained “suspension of the ethical.” In this
modern era we have not yet reached a “desanctification of space.”16 Such a state of exception
11
The Economy of Debate highlights the dynamics of the contest over who is part of the debate over beginnings
and who has the last word. The powerful are privileged to determine their tale as “event” while silencing their
opponents telling as “non-event.” Cohen, 1994.
12
Emanuel Levinas in Rose, 2008: 157.
13
Rose, 2007: 160.
14
Emanuel Levinas writes, “self is not a substance but a relation” (cited in Rose, 2008: 162).
15
Harvey, 1989: 216.
16
Foucault, 1984: 2.
4
is not a special type of law, rather it is a “suspension of the juridical order itself, it defines
law’s threshold or limit concept.”17
The landscape that I refer to- most recently conceived of and remembered as “Palestine”was integrated into a region under the Ottoman Empire before much of it was re-configured
as “Israel” by the imaginings and practices of a political- at times secular at times religiousproject: Zionism. Prior to the arrival of Zionism and European colonialism the naming of the
land by rulers, religious leaders or travelers had been of little concern to the inhabitants.18 In
the middle of the 20th century the ideology of nation-state was transposed onto the landscape.
In the ensuing program of so-called state-building, the agents of the Zionist nation-state
razed, re-ordered and transformed the landscape according to a foreign imaginary, uprooting
plants, animals and people in its way. I will assess the transformation of space as a political
tool in regulating the production and re-creation of history. I will ask not what history is but
how it is made (time) and how this production re-makes landscape (space). Towards this end I
will begin by highlighting the rootedness of the Zionist vision for the land of “Palestine” in a
“Western” project of modernization and progress. Following, I will analyze the Zionist
depiction of the local Arab inhabitants of the land as “savage”- later to be transformed into
the image of the “terrorist.” I will ask what role such a portrayal played in the framework of
the Zionist “civilizing” mission with the aim of formulating a national narrative (time) within
the confines of a Zionist nation-state (space). This formation was formulated so as to be
legible within the global nation-state regime, while ascertaining illegibility for those projected
as lying outside the demarcated space- Palestinians. I will then assess the Zionist re-creation
of the Palestinian landscape over the past century based on the Zionist conception: “a land
without a people for a people without a land.” Though this thesis will focus on the Gaza Strip
as its geographical unit of analysis, this chapter will go into some detail into the Zionist
national narrative and its restructuring of the landscape of Palestine as whole before focusing
more particularly on the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip plays a particular role within Zionist
national narratives as it is deemed a lesser priority in contrast to the coastal areas North of it
and especially the hills of West Bank, or “Judea and Samaria” as articulated within the
Zionist narrative. Though the Israeli administration’s approach to control and governance of
the Gaza Strip has evolved since its annexation in 1967, most significantly in 1994 and 2005,
the Zionist national narrative and its claim to the deemed “biblical Israel” continue to act as
the justification for ongoing control over the Gaza Strip.
In the space of Palestine, Zionism formulated associated images and symbols of
considerable force seeped in the religious (Judaism), the historical (the Holocaust) and the
political (nation-statism). The project “overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its
objects,” making space “directly lived through its associated images and symbols.”19 Hereby
history itself is re-cast, the geographical region of “Palestine” becomes the “holy land,”
Zionism a legitimated civilizing project.20 Meanwhile, the uprooting and expulsion of
thousands of inhabitants is deemed an ecological endeavor to save the land buttressed by
claims of the likes of Winston Churchill: “the injustice is when those who live in a country
leave it to be desert for thousands of years.”21 “Space reflects a history while it also
designates possible future histories,” writes Lefebvre.22 This relationship of space to history
reveals the power entailed in the control over space, re-arrangements have the power to be life
destroying. The production of space is a historical process with actors, utilizing such tools as
maps, urban planning, architecture, archeology and agricultural centralization, making up
“relations of power so as to bring about new spaces for the deployment of power.”23 The
17
Agamben, 2005: 4.
Pappe, 2004: 11.
19
Lefebvre, 1991: 39.
20
Gregory, 2004: 79.
21
Gregory, 2004: 81.
22
Lefebvre, 1991: 73.
23
Trouillot, 2001: 127.
18
5
production of history is spatially grounded in the re-making of landscape where any economy
of debate is drowned out, the interlocutor is deemed absent.24 For Deborah Rose’s Aboriginal
interlocutors- likewise silenced within an economy of debate- a history without trees is death:
“[w]e’ll run out of history, because Whitefellas fuck the Law up, and they’re knocking all the
power out of this country.”25 For the inhabitants pushed out of Palestine it is no different,
“they took the space with the power of the sacred and with the sacredness of power, with the
imagination and with geography… Palestine has been pushed to the edge of history.”26 Yet
for Palestinians- as is the case for Jews- “the past is neither distant nor over.”27
1.1. ISRAEL: THE MODERN CITY; PALESTINE, THE BACKWARD VILLAGE
“One thing is certain, and that is that the land will belong more to the side that is more
capable for suffering for it and working it… That is only logical, that is only just, and that is
how it should be in the nature of things.”
-Aaron David Gordon, “An Irrational Solution”
“The high-modernist aesthetic and ideology of most colonial agronomists and their Westerntrained successors foreclosed a dispassionate examination of local cultivation practices, which
were regarded as deplorable customs for which modern, scientific farming was the
corrective.”
- James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State
The village - with its special arrangements of houses and orchards, its open meeting places,
its burial ground, its collective identity - was built into the personality of each individual
villager to a degree that made separation like an obliteration of the self.
- Rosemary Sayegh, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries
The Zionist vision entailed an aspiration of joining the modern European way of life. In their
experience of rejection the Ashkenazi (European Jews) projected their desires onto the land of
Palestine, and what had been formulated as biblical Israel in their minds was transformed into
a yearning for a Jewish nation-state in the image of the European state.28 Raja Shehadeh
writes of the ‘pornographic’ nature of the exilic desire for an envisioned landscape.29 Here the
protagonists- both Israelis and Palestinians- lose sight of the landscape as land-scape and
project their collectively constructed desires onto the physical space as “homeland,” “national
state,” and entailing sacred significance.
For Zionists the landscape is to provide a homeland to return to from exile, while their
biblically constructed relationship to the land provides the impetus to the specificity of their
tie to precisely that space. This desire is placed within the framework of modernization and its
24
Cohen, 1994. See The Proclamation of Independence of State of Israel: “The Land of Israel was the birthplace
of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved
independence and created a culture of nation and universal significance.” Cited in Whitelam, 1996: 122.
25
Rose, 2008: 162.
26
Mourid Barghouti cited in Gregory, 2004: 135. For the Bedouin tribes of the Jordan this process is described as
the “age of government” that came with all the violent transformative dimensions of the nation-state project. For
them the passing of the “age of shaykhs” commemorates the “end of history” (Shryock, 1996). In Botswana this
process of colonization with its categorizing, totalizing history-writing trend is identified as “the papers that killed
us.”
27
Lila Abu Lughod, 2007: 10.
28
Bowman, 1999: 54ff. Ghazi Falah describes Zionism heritage thus: “When the Portuguese colonized, they built
churches; when the British colonized they built trading houses; when the French colonized they built schools. In
the case of Palestine, I would submit that when the Israelis colonized Palestine, they destroyed most of what they
found, and claimed they made the desert bloom.’ Ghazi Falah, Transformation and Designification, 105, cited in
Abu Lughod et al, 1999.
29
Shehadah, 2007: 84ff.
6
coupling with colonialism, resulting in an archaic blend of settler-colonialism.30 In the
process of realizing this dream, “[t]he Israelis traveled from the quest to impose on the
landscape their Zionist identity to its converse- its privatization, at the price of turning the
landscape into a desert of concrete and asphalt.”31 The Zionist national narrative was
constructed upon a centuries-long Western gaze towards the biblical lands as the origin of
Judeo-Christianity, based on the traditions of the Jewish Bible, deemed the “taproot of
European and Western civilization.”32 The European nation-state, based on a constitutive
Judeo-Christian collective identity and inherently tied to a biblical landscape, becomes the
rationale and subsequently the vehicle for the re-shaping of that very landscape according to a
modern European visage.33 In a diabolic circularity each conception thus claims to verify and
legitimate the other. Yet, the city revealed itself as the most effective form to perpetuate
modernism as a system of values. Thus the Zionist project eventually prioritized its modern
vision over its religious raison d’être and justification for return to a “promised land.”34 Scott
writes that high modernism predominantly emphasized the future, while considering the past
an impediment, “that must be transcended.”35
This prioritization meant that labor Zionism neglected Palestinian labor until 1967 at which
time Palestinian labor was prioritized over Jewish labor for its cost effectiveness. Up until
that period the victim of Zion’s mimesis of high modernism were the Ashkenazi Jews.
Zionists used modern means- modernization/urbanization- for their religiously justified ends:
their existence on/relationship with the land, was made legible in modern terms of an ordering
colonization. This twisted amalgamation- divinely ordained colonization- mirrored a
Christian discourse of legitimization of conquest, expansion and erasure used for centuries
largely by European empires.
For both Christian and Jewish expansionists the landscape acted as a signifier, a portrait
presenting and representing the “high point of human achievement,” and “a physical
landscape of extraordinary complexity, power and splendor” was certainly able to act as the
tabula on which to exhibit power.36 This urban “splendor” needed human hands to build it and
here Palestinian villagers, having lost their land and thus their occupation, would reappear in
the backdrop of the Zionist scene as migrant workers. Already, in 1945 45% of male labor
was employed in cities, which was weakening village structure.37 After Israel’s 1948
expulsion of Palestinian villagers hundreds of thousands found themselves without land- and
thus without work- and with no real alternatives many Palestinians found employment in the
wave of a Zionist urban boom. Current Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu sees the Arab
population as “separate” from the land on which they live and once lived. According to such a
narrative Palestinians remain “unattached to the land on which they live both emotionally and
legally,” and “possess a transitory and itinerant character,” which makes them prime
candidates for wage labor to materialize the Zionist urban myth.38
Biblical scholar G. Garbini put it this way, “[t]he ancient Near East, with its civilization
and its history, has been rescued from the oblivion of time by just over a century of European
30
Zionism’s colonialism proves anachronistic because it breaks even those rules set by the new colonizers set for
themselves. European states had largely limited their expansionist endeavors to an economic form of neocolonialism in the rubric of providing national independence to the colonized. See also section 4.1.1.
31
Benvenisti, 2000: 8.
32
Whitelam, 1996: 11.
33
Joseph Massad points out that it fit the Zionist narrative better to replace the Jewish historical memory with a
geographic memory, which meant that prophets replaced kings in an adapted Biblical narrative (Massad 2006: 38).
34
Levine, 2005: 256n. 2.
35
Scott, 1998: 95. Zygmunt Bauman described this trend of prioritization, “[m]odern science displaced and
replaced God; it also created a vacancy: the office of the supreme legislator… it was now up to mortal earthlings to
bring it about” (cited in Scott, 1998: 87).
36
Harvey, 1989: 23.
37
Lybarger, 2007: 37f.
38
Strawson, 1998b.
7
science.”39 The Zionist narrative buttressed the legitimacy for its very existence by
formulating the European city on the “backward” terrain of Palestine. Here they claimed to
“make the desert bloom,” while settling in a “land without a people, for a people with a land.”
The master story of the Jews as “returning,” rather than conquering or settling in light of a
biblical past- and doing so with a modern trajectory- efficiently informed the perspective of
the likes of Lord Balfour. Two years after formulating his critical 1917 declaration he noted
in a memorandum, “Zionism, be it right or wrong, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present
needs, in future hope, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of the 700,000
Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land.”40 The memory of “700,000 Arabs” lacked the
legitimacy of their Jewish neighbors because they lacked the latter’s extensive written record.
In his account of the most successful but silenced slave revolt in history Michel-Ralph
Trouillot exposes the historical traces of the written record of Haiti to be “uneven.”41 The
equivalent absence of modern requirements enabled the whitewashing of Palestinian traces on
the land.
“On 9 April 1948, Jewish forces occupied the village of Deir Yasin. It lay on a hill west
of Jerusalem… As they burst into the village, the Jewish soldiers sprayed the houses
with machine-gun fire, killing many of the inhabitants. The remaining villagers were
then gathered in one place and murdered in cold blood.”42
Today the land of Deir Yasin is a fashionable suburb of west Jerusalem.
In accordance with a logic of biblical chronology, the 1948 Israeli Proclamation of
Independence referenced a “re-establishment” of a national home in Palestine for the Jewish
people.”43 The concurrent story- cyclically rooted in the first- declared that the Zionist project
would bring Europe to these regions of the periphery, and thereby succeed in bringing
civilization to the desert. The tie between the ancient justification for Israel’s existence on the
land of Palestine and its manifestation of the European nation-state in the dark world of the
Near/ Middle East allowed for its exceptionality and the Zionist project’s longevity despite its
blatant colonial expression.44 The modern process placed the Zionist settlers in the center of
the landscape’s narrative, erasing the prior inhabitants. Meanwhile, the aura of such a
“territorial refashioning” sought to leave no space for questioning of whom the landscape
remembered as its neighbor.45 In this context Deborah Rose seeks to shift the emphasis of
history writing to writing it “other-wise” and “Earth-wise” whereby the land becomes a
protagonist.46 Much like her Aboriginal interlocutors, the indigenous inhabitants of
Palestinian lands- Arab and Jew- speak of a central relationship between human and land that
is silenced in the erasures of both protagonists’ land.47 Zionism’s fast track of modernization
neglected the possibility of considering such “development” a “weed,”48 rather than a remedy
39
Garbini, 1988 cited in Whitelam, 1996: 59.
Khalidi, 1971, 208 cited in Whitelam, 1996: 123.
41
Trouillot, 1995: 47.
42
Pappe, 2006: 90ff.
43
Whitelam, 1996: 122.
44
Whitelam writes, “[a]ncient Israel, as a nation state, or incipient nation state, provides a direct link with Europe
as the very essence of civilization.” Whitelam, 1996: 47f. While Sasson explained that “the struggle for national
self-determination is the key element in Israel’s imagined past” cited in ibid.
45
Abu El-Haj, 2001: 22; Mitchell asks, “how can the landscape itself be said to have a “perspective”? Does this
not suggest, quite literally, that the landscape sees as well as being seen, that it looks back in some way at its
beholders, returning their gaze…” Mitchell, 1999: 238f.
46
Rose, 2008: 157.
47
Deborah Rose collected Aboriginal narratives, which in the usual course of Western historiography are silenced
from within the economy of debate. “The words themselves,” Rose writes, “break the frames of western
historiography, but their intention is to break colonizing frames of complacency, conquest and erasure.” Rose,
2008: 157.
48
Scott, 1998: 13. Scott gives the example the forest as habitat disappearing and being considered an economic
resource. Thus fauna serves an utilitarian purpose where fauna that preys is considered a “weed” or “pest,” wanted
40
8
from the landscape’s perspective.
The tale of Khirbet Hiza’a recounts the memories of a Zionist soldier following the ethnic
cleansing of the inhabitants on their land. He recognizes the severed relationship.
“And here are the checkerboard fields, plowed and turning green, and the deeply shaded
orchards, and the hedges that dissect the area in tranquil patterns… and behold, the grief of
orphanhood is descending on all of them like an opaque bridal veil. Fields that will not be
harvested. Orchards that will not be watered. Paths that will be desolate. And a kind of lossand ‘twas all for naught. Thorns and brambles straggling over everything. And a parched
yellowness, the wail of the wilderness.”49
Towards the ends of implementing the “creative destruction ” of a colonial modern way of
life, the Zionist project portrayed the local inhabitants as culture-less, history-less, state-less,
in short, savage, invisible and out of place on an “empty” land.50
1.2. ZIONISM’S TROPE OF THE SAVAGE
“They sat in silence, and with tireless patience watched our every motion with that vile,
uncomplaining impoliteness which is so truly Indian and which makes a white man so
nervous he wants to exterminate the whole tribe.”
– Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
“For Europe we shall be a part of the wall against Asia…
the vanguard of culture against barbarism.”
- Theodor Herzl
Zionism swept into the landscape of Palestine with a dialectical rhythm of remembering and
forgetting the past. Thus, formulated this new space for the deployment of power it made the
present and future of one nation while unmaking that of an other.51 The Zionist project reordered the landscape according to its desires, the legitimacy of which came on the tail end of
unimaginable violence perpetrated against Jews in Europe in light of which “[n]o one
questions the use of violence in self-defense.”52 Aime Cesaire complicates the Nazi’s use of
violence, writing of Europe’s colonizing peoples, “before they were its victims, they were its
accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they
absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to
non-European peoples.” Having been the victims of these European tactics of conquest the
Zionist project was morally safeguarded to emulate the same spirit of colonization in
Palestine.
“A spatial practice must have a certain cohesiveness, but this does not imply that it is
coherent.”53 In the Zionist project cohesiveness is tied to an idea, this is the illusory idea of
state and its illusory double of the cohesion of nation and state: the modern nation-state.54 The
idea driving the endeavor of nation-state harks back to an intellectual seed of the philosopher
Thomas Hobbes: the conception of a “people,” and the ideologically correlated conception of
territory. Thomas Hobbes, the great spokesman of the idea of the state, juxtaposed the
“People” against Spinoza’s conception of the “Multitude.”55 Hereby he imposed even deeper
animals are “livestock,” the unwanted “predators”, some people thus become “citizens” while others are deemed
“terrorists” al according to their utilitarian use. See further on the discursivity of “weed” in section 4.2.3.
49
S. Yizhar, Khirbet Hiza’a, cited in Benvenisti, 2000: 239.
50
Harvey, 1989: 16. “The Israelis are stealing our cultural, human and even religious heritage, in a desperate
attempt to prove that the Palestinians are nothing but a collection of refugees.” Jamil Salhut, Social Content in the
Palestinian Folktale (1983) in Benvenisti, 2000: 261. See also Handler in section 1.2.
51
Trouillot, 2001: 127; Also see Fabian, 2003: 490.
52
Arendt, 2003: 241.
53
Lefebvre, 1991: 38.
54
The idea is anything but coherent, Eyal Weizman describes the dialogical co-existence of “ordered process of
planning” and a “structured chaos” where dispossession is carried out at the hands of violent civilian settlers
(Weizman, 2007: 5).
55
Hobbes, De Cive, chapter XII, section VIII, cited in Virno, 2004: 23.
9
the fabricated unity of “the people” as “common sense,” and its subversion- the
unquantifiable conception of “the Multitude”- as heresy.
A contemporary of Hobbes, John Locke, considered the work of human’s hands to become
their possession including the land they labored on, thus devising the concept of ‘private
property.’ Locke believed that human beings seek naturally to “subdue nature and to turn her
bounty into private property.”56 Those that did not show this natural inclination to “improve
or conquer nature,” Locke deemed as “savages.”57 Furthermore, nations are said to own their
cultures and to own their past in line with a logic of “individual possessiveness.” This
terminology seeks to describe Locke’s conceptualization of property- once deemed common
ownership- as privately possessed in accord with a Christian objectification of “the work of
one’s hands” deemed as private property. The individual thus annexes natural objects and
makes them “extensions” of one’s self. Thus, in the “individualist worldview there is an
almost mystical bond uniting the agent with the things he acts upon.”58 The reverse of such
logic leads to a nation or group that appears not to preserve its cultural or historic
memorabilia- even if that is due to being coerced into silence- to be deemed savage. If “being
depends upon having,” and an individual comes to be defined by what they possess and they
possess nothing, then they are nothing- the same goes for the group that possesses nothing,
they are nothing.59 Ironically, Zionism was responding to this very same European trend of
thought, Aaron David Gordon, an early Zionist leader would write, “[e]very alien movement
sweeps us along, every wind in the world carries us. We in ourselves are almost nonexistent,
so of course we are nothing in the eyes of other people either.”60 In the spirit of John Locke,
Gordon would go on to conclude, “there is no other right to the land and no other form of
possession of it than the right and the power of possession through labor.”61 During the
Ottoman period a land system was in use called mush’, a rotating method of cultivation of
collectively owned land. Though Ottoman law initially provided legal cover for such a
method as Matruka- meaning abandoned and was technically state land but was assigned for
public use for farming, markets or roads.62 Despite the 1858 Ottoman Land Code that banned
this communal system of land use, a majority of farmers continued to utilize the musha’
system. In the 30s the British conclusively banned the method claiming it was a “primitive
form of agriculture,” and a “major impediment to progress of agriculture and of Arab villages
generally.”63 Similarly, miri land was considered a temporary loan of land from the state for
private use. Mawat land was considered “dead” and was undeveloped or unused usually lying
where “the loudest noise made by a person in the closest place of settlement will not be
heard.”64 All categories of matruka, miri and mewat land were transformed into a uniform
category of private property. This enforcement of private property reflected British policies
elsewhere, where they had been used to ascertain legal control over colonial space. The
following description by a British colonial officer writing about India in the early 20th century
clarifies the point. “[T]o give them private property would only bind them with stronger ties
to our interests, and make them our subjects.”65 The colonizers- whether in India or Palestinesought the hegemony of a liberal conception of property, which imposes the basis for their
“order of things.” The 1858 Ottoman land law changes did have an immediate effect in that
pockets of hired labor appeared. As private property became a possibility, big landowners
56
Handler, 1991: 65.
Handler, 1991: 65.
58
Handler, 1988: 153.
59
Handler, 1991: 67ff.
60
Cited in Sternhell, 1998: 48. Gordon then explains: “It is not our fault that we have reached this point, but that is
the fact: that is what exile is like.”
61
Cited in Sternhell, 1998: 70.
62
Kagan, 2007: 432; Pappe, 2004: 15.
63
Kimmerling and Migdal, 1993: 18.
64
Cited in B’tselem, 2002: 50.
65
Alexander Dow cited in Chakrabarty, 1992: 6.
57
10
started buying up smaller plots on the outskirts of villages as farmers were unable to pay the
required taxes.66
These totalizing conceptions made space more coherent, allowing for a centralized
articulation that would help blaze the trail for the contemporary nation-state. An address of
the current Zionist nation/state-building process must reference its roots. The central schism
took place in 1948 at which point the peak of potentiality of the making/unmaking of
Palestine as a unified nation occurred in dialectic manner.67 This moment calls for an
excursus into the realm of nation-statism. Derek Sayer considers the state an “ideological
project, not an agency with such projects,” he goes on to explain that the “[s]tate is the mask,
not what hides behind the mask.”68 Sayer is building on the analysis of Philip Abrams who
saw the necessity to unveil the mask-like nature of the state. For Abrams,
“[t]he state is then, in every sense of the term a triumph of concealment. It conceals
the real history of relations of subjection behind an a-historical mask of legitimating
illusion… The real official secret, however, is the secret of the non-existence of the
state…[I]t is the just the centrality of the struggle that the idea of the state… contrives
to mask…In sum: the state is not the reality which stands behind the mask of political
practice… it is itself the mask.”69
Despite this mask-like nature of “state” this fictitious unity bears a double deception in that
the acts of fictitious state-institution agents are deemed “legitimate” over and against the nonstate illegitimates. This theme of legitimacy will reappear throughout the analysis of the
razing of Palestine. In my effort to write its ‘history’ other-wise it is such a starting point of
“legality”/”legitimacy” that I will seek to destabilize. I aim to prioritize the relationship
existent between the earth and its inhabitants, rather than the legalities of the international
framework of the nation-state. It is only in the daze of totalizing endeavors as state-making
and colonization that such conceptions of legality can be conjured up, and sold to a populace
drunken on fear. Johannes Fabian depicts time, like space, as an “ideologically constructed
instrument of power.”70 It is within the rubric of time that the Zionist project voiced a national
narrative and simultaneously wiped away its other’s history from global consciousness. In
light of this reality the Zionist project was able to speak of a “Palestinian economy” or
“Palestinian agriculture” but never mention the inhabitants as “Palestinians.”71 The Zionist
Palestine Exploration Fund meanwhile was created for the sake of “investigation… of the
Holy Land,” but without mention of its people. Through these silencings and bracketings,
time is violently altered by the fact that, “Palestinian history is effectively silenced by this
tyranny of biblical time, which has been perpetuated by Western scholarship.”72 The necessity
arises to learn to think outside the shackling linear boundaries of the nation-state.
The violent Zionist project sought its legitimacy in a Western notion of bringing civilization
to another of Europe’s outposts- a ‘rational’ endeavor drawn out of the hegemony of
knowledge while silencing the ‘irrationality’ of its racist national zeal.73 Theodor Herzl, the
founder of political Zionism, considered that a Jewish state in Palestine would form “part of a
rampart for Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.”74 The
66
Pappe, 2004: 24f.
See chapter IV.I.A.
68
Sayer, 1994: 371.
69
Abrams, 1987: 77, 79, 82.
70
Fabian cited in Whitelam, 1996: 58ff.
71
Whitelam, 1996: 45. Also see Trouillot, 1996.
72
Whitelam, 1996: 61.
73
Here the constructed nature of Europe itself must be highlighted, far from being monolithic, the European
project is part of a production of space and time. Mignolo points out that “Orientalism” and its matrix of power is
but a “second round of world-power transformation,” and likewise a construction, rather than a monolithic reality
(Mignolo, 2005: 40). Edouard Glissant points out, “the West is not the West, it is a project, not a place” (Trouillot,
2003: 22).
74
Gregory, 2004: 79.
67
11
indigenous enemy was a required actor in the modern discourse of Zionist conquest.
According to the biblical position of the Jews they were returning to what must be an empty
land for them to re-inhabit. Yet, for the sake of the modern discourse of nation-statism an
enemy was needed to unite the “us.” The utopia of the “savage” furthermore, “made sense
only against the absolute order against which it was projected,” leading to the possibility of
“fictional ideal states.”75 According to the Zionists, they reflected their- claimed- European
roots over and against the indigenous inhabitants otherness and savageness. The world had
witnessed “[a]s Christendom became Europe, Europe itself became Christendom,”76 it was
now time for a facsimile: as Judaism becomes Palestine, Palestine becomes Judaism. The
concentration of political power in the name of the Jewish god presaged the advent of internal
order. Without the existence of the savage- later to evolve into the “terrorist”- to dominate,
the West and here “Israel” are inconceivable.
The transformation of the Zionist other to “terrorist” occurred at a moment when its
nationalist legitimacy was being challenged by a new opponent and a new form of violence.
One such moment took place on 6 April 1994 when a Jewish settler entered the Ibrahimi
Mosque in Hebron and shot dead 38 worshippers in cold blood. 41 days later, following the
mourning period, Hamas struck back, with its first military attack that targeted Israeli
civilians.77 For the Israeli narrative, the murdering rabbi- who was eventually himself beat to
death- became a national hero, the revenging Hamas became the violent “terrorist.” This
naming process created an “identification effect” that created a shared conviction between
Jewish Israelis who now felt a common enemy, while recognizing themselves as “the
same. ” 78 The state-making process here necessitated an exclusion process in order to cement
its selective inclusion. Paulo Virno posits that in contrast to anguish- a discomfort with a
general unknown- fear is a fabricated sensation contrasted with the discursive sense of
“home,” and a feeling of security within one’s group.79 Towards formulating such a sense of
“home” and its contrary “terrorist” threat, Netanyahu claimed, “[t]o combat terrorism, Israeli
military and security forces must have access to every part of the territory, including the
urban centres from which the terrorists may strike and to which they may return for safe
haven.”80 Such a security stance allowed for Israel’s practice of extra-judicial killings,
which actualized a “‘capacity to be killed’ inherent in the condition of the colonized: the
Palestinians.”81 Trouillot’s depiction of Western colonial nature illustrates the Zionist
enterprise well,
“[t]he symbolic process through which the West created itself thus involved the
universal legitimacy of power- and order became, in that process, the answer to the
question of legitimacy… the modern state and colonization posed- and continue to
pose- to the West the issue of philosophical base of order.”82
The seeming rationality of the Zionist project would quickly reveal its destructive nature.
This is not so much ‘irrationality’ as the manifestation of a dark side of the knowledge/ power
construct of modernity that implodes the rational/ irrational binary. I will try to entertain the
idea of ethnography with a new point of entry by assessing the Zionist projects razing of a
landscape and replacing it with its own vision for the use of space. To stand at this perch and
retain an amoral stance would be akin to positivist historiography that seeks to sever the past
75
Trouillot, 2003: 20. This Zionist logic reflected the 20th century utopian urban planner Le Corbusier who wrote,
“we must refuse even the slightest concession to what is. The mess we are in now” (Scott, 1998: 106).
76
Trouillot, 2003: 20.
77
See chapter 3 for further analysis on the legitimacy of violence.
78
Trouillot, 2001: 126; 131.
79
Virno, 2004: 29ff.
80
Netanyahu cited in Strawson, 1998b: 52.
81
Hanafi, 2006: 98.
82
Trouillot, 2003: 20.
12
from the present.83 In “City of Walls” Teresa Caldeira speaks of the “unbounded” nature of
Brazilian slum dwellers. These fall outside of any safety net or system of protection their
unbounded bodies are “permeable… open to intervention, on which manipulations by others
are not considered problematic... [and] unprotected by individual rights.”84 In contrast David
Cohen depicts the Holocaust as a type of “bounded” history, one, which is recognized and
referenced in the written records of historiography.85 In juxtaposition, the unbounded nature
of the Palestinian past- silenced and censored- releases the unboundedness of the Palestinian’s
body in a diabolical merger. In an attempt to counter such trends, our point of entry must
begin with listening and exploring the how of the making of such a condition of
unboundedness- the rejection to do so has left a violent mark.86
1.3. THE USE OF MAPS: Silencing, Bio-Politics
“Our land was being transformed before our eyes, and a new map was being drawn. We were
not supposed to look, only to blindly believe in the hollow language of peace proclaimed by
Israeli leaders, a peace that amounted to mere words, rhetoric that meant nothing.”
- Raja Shehada, Palestinian Walks
“[N]o medium could effect such total obliteration better than cartography, for maps, by their
very nature have a ‘genius for omission.’”
– Philip C. Muehrcke, Map Use
I have not drawn any precise maps to define what we have in mind for an agreement with
the Palestinians. But I do know that I represent a very broad national consensus when I
declare…
that Israel will not give up control of airspace and water resources,
that it must keep strategic zones that it considers vital.
- Benjamin Netanyahu
When members of the Israeli government host political guests they are first sent to a
memorial site: Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. At the museum they are
introduced to a “system of signs” alluding to the state of Israel as the only possible answer to
atrocities of the past.87 In Yad Vashem death is portrayed as extra-linear, the lives of the
deceased live on in the current Zionist milieu;88 for the local Arab inhabitants of Palestine it is
no different. Thus, skipping 2-3000 years of secondary ‘history’ in a sweeping “totemic” act,
the Zionist project engages in an act of mythification whereby the past is glorified allowing
for the forgetting of the present.89 Palestinian history moreover would be “silenced by the
invention of ancient Israel in the image of the European nation state.”90 Such habits beg the
question, how is death utilized, how remembered, how historicized and eternalized to a
specific end? Yad Veshem surrounded by sites of razed Palestinian villages pays tribute to the
death of Jews while violently silencing the appropriation and refashioning of the very land the
shrine is constructed on.
Cartography and archeology become the lieux de memoire, where “memory attaches itself
to sites, where history attaches itself to events.”91 Through these sites the Zionist project
deems to preserve “(arti)facts” only that which they “discover” in line with a desired Zionist
83
Esmeira, 2007: 241.
Caldeira, 2000: 368.
85
Cohen, 1994: 64ff.
86
Abu Lughod, 2007: 12; 28.
87
Swedenburg, 2003: 43-46.
88
Esmeir, 2007: 248.
89
Swedenburg, 2003: 54; Fabian, 2003: 502.
90
Whitelam, 1996: 36.
91
Nora, 1989: 22.
84
13
past, while exiling the life in its path.92 Thus, while institutions like Yad Vashem engage in a
selective act of repressing and forgetting, the exercise attempts to eradicate the existence of a
Palestinian presence.93 One exhibition on Yad Vashem’s website invites the visitor to “enter
and “bear witness,” it is a simultaneous invitation to remain silent.94 The open page to the
exhibit entitled, “The Untold Story,” depicts a crumpled note that read, “we are about to die,
five thousand people, they are cruelly shooting us.” The truth is that while the Holocaust is a
cruel event, it has become a story that is “told”- not untold. While over 50 million documents
recall the Jewish Holocaust no mention is made of the violence carried out in 1948 against the
local inhabitants of Palestine.95 An image of an early Palestinian political leader Hajj Amin elHusseini smiling and shaking hands with Heinrich Himmler is invoked as an image of
consent and deference to violence perpetrated against Jews in the past with an aim of
quashing any problematizing of current Jewish violence.96 In typical nature of the state
archive no documentation exists of the destruction of Arab villages. Zionist leadership strictly
warned its military apparatuses of leaving behind no trace of the killing of its inhabitants.97
The image further buttresses the Zionist project as vindicated by a mythical eternal Jewish
persecution.
Figure 1: Hajj Amin el-Husseini meets Heinrich Himmler. Source: Yad Vashem
Zionists arriving in Palestine in the first half of the 20th century came prepared to execute
their political vision. The first ordering they engaged in was the transformation of the space
they arrived in. Already in 1865 the Palestine Exploration Fund was formed with the aim of
investigating the archeology, geography, geology and natural history of Palesine. The ensuing
historical geographies and material remainder were fetishized as facts.98 One map utilizes
multiple layers, the first of which marks archeological sites as one layer and contemporary
facts on ground on another layer.99 By marking archeological sites in a larger temporalgeographic grid, they were deemed to justify the existence of the latter layer.100
92
See Abu El-Haj, 2001: 74.
Swedenburg, 2003: 49f.
94
Yad Vashem, 2010.
95
Swedenburg, 2003: 43ff.
96
Swedenburg, 2003: 46.
97
Iman Hamdy, presentation at American University in Cairo, Israel and the Palestine Question, March 25, 2008;
“No one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter” (Esmeira, 2007: 32).
98
Abu El-Haj, 2001: 84.
99
Abu El-Haj, 2001: 79.
100
Abu El-Haj, 2001: 81.
93
14
Figure 2: A Map of Palestine: ^ mark archeological sites. Source: Abu El-Haj, 2001
Thus the logic applies, that when “memory is held in place by trees, how better to eradicate
it than to chop them down?” 101 The Zionists determined to use archeology, cartography and
architecture to ascertain their vision to eradicate trees and memories through a drastic razing
of landscape. Prior to 1948 the Zionists’ attempt to purchase land from the local inhabitants
was not met with widespread success. The withdrawal of the British presence in Mandated
Palestine was the moment Zionist leaders utilized to push further into the Palestinian frontier
and mark territory that they deemed a part of “Eretz Israel.” Under the pretense of war the
Zionist forces uprooted and exiled over 700,000 local inhabitants, often razing their towns
and villages behind them or replacing their homes and land with Jewish families. As a
reminder and celebration of this tradition, the door of Tel Aviv’s first mayor Meir Dizengoff’s
home was adorned with a Torah verse from Amos 9: 14 that reads, “I will restore the fortunes
of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them.”102
Following the establishment of the state of Israel the Zionists were able to ensue a legal
process of “dispossession of Arab landholders while simultaneously masking and legitimizing
the reallocation of the land to the Jewish population.”103 Land purchases had amounted to
only 6% Jewish ownership of Mandated Palestine. By the 1960s this was increased to 94%
for which the Zionist project utilized laws as legal-political tools for appropriation. The main
strategy towards this end was the Knesset’s introduction of the “Absentees Property Law” of
1950. The law stated that all property owned by those deemed “absentees”- Jews were
summarily exempted- was to be passed over the “Custodian of Absentee Property:” the state
of Israel.104 Furthermore, the law denied absentees the permission to sell their land. In 1953
Israel enacted the Land Acquisition Law, with the aim of retroactively legalizing ad hoc land
seizures.105 The utilized “legal” methods reflected the tradition of the British Empire of
“declaring indigenous land to be terra nullius and thus ripe for colonization.”106 In 1970 the
Ottoman Land Law of 1858 was appropriated, which aided the Israeli state in appropriating a
101
Rose, 2008: 166.
Cited in LeVine, 1999: 107.
103
Kedar cited in Gregory, 2004: 86.
104
Kagan, 2007: 435ff.
105
Kagan, 2007: 436.
106
Harley, 1989: 12.
102
15
maximum of land.107 Thus, land that wasn’t farmed for three consecutive years was deemed
as makhlul - abandoned- allowing the sovereign to take possession of the land or transfer
its rights to another person. The Ottoman rationale for this dimension of that law was to
create an incentive to ensure that maximum possible land was farmed, and then taxed. For
the Zionist state such laws could be appropriated to expand their annexation of nonJewish owned land. In this way the Zionist state reassigned more than one-quarter of the West
Bank to its settlers with the justification that it was “state land.” The Ottoman categorization
of “dead” land was appropriated within a Zionist vision as confirming the absence of
inhabitants on the land. Buried under the Zionist vision of modern urbanization, the land truly
meets its death. The seizures of Palestinian lands began ad hoc immediately following the
1948 expulsion of Palestinians from their villages. This trend of property confiscation
followed by the enactment of a legal regime that would “legalize” the crime. Western legal
logic was applied to transform the landscape of Palestine in its transition from Ottoman
governance to a Zionist state.108 Coupled with the implemented conceptions of private
property ownership came the private membership in a political club- the nation-state- which
“legalized” such processes of ownership. In exchange for membership the political subject
became the ownership of the state.
Attempts at raising attention to Israeli state forms of ethnic cleansing have revealed the
complex legal system existent to silence the past. In 2000 Teddy Katz was taken to court for
the conclusion of his 1998 MA thesis that a massacre had taken place in the village of Tantura
in 1948. The legal battle that was to ensue revealed not only the power of the written word in
form of history over the spoken as memory, but also the monopoly of the Zionist state over
knowledge production.109 Moreover, any form of historical knowledge beyond the hegemony
of the accepted written record was simply deemed unacceptable. Within the Israeli legal
system a paper is not a legitimate source of evidence unless its author is available for judicial
cross-examination. According to Article 36 of the Evidence of Ordinance one exception
exists to the rule: “if a state institution produced the written papers.”110 “The art of memory…
is very much something to be used, misused and exploited, rather than something that sits
inertly there for each person to possess and contain.”111 A state cannot exist without an
archive to verify and “affirm its fiction to itself.”112
Yet, these moments of silencing are not only limited to the archives. In the village of
Husan, 7km West of Bethlehem, 1948 is still reoccurring today. Since the early 70s the
Zionist state has justified the annexing of most of the farmland belonging to Husan and the
surrounding five villages of the Arqub area. After constructing expansive colonies on the
villages’ razed farmland the Zionist state has now begun the process of fencing and walling
off of the Palestinian residents on behalf of the “security” of the Jewish settlers. Furthermore,
the Israeli government has recently released its plans to seal off the village area connecting it
with nearby Bethlehem through a tunnel. Only Israeli-issued identification card holders from
within the villages will be permitted to enter and exit the tunnel. As life becomes
unsustainable inside the villages without access to annexed land the young generation is
migrating to out-lying cities, according to Israeli law thereby forfeiting their local
identification cards and their access to their villages. All the while the process of slow ethnic
cleansing remains “legal.”113
107
See at further land legal transformations in section 1.2.
Kagan, 2007: 432f.
109
Esmeira, 2007: 235.
110
Esmeira, 2007: 236: Legitimate state institutions include, “state, municipality, a business or anybody who
provides a service to the public.”
111
Edward Said, 1999: 7.
112
Stoler, 2002.
113
Hamamreh, N. and J., interview with author, 25 June 2008.
108
16
Figure 3: This tunnel will connect/sever Husan from Bethlehem
The “legal” space for blatant land appropriation in the ebb of war was opened by the
outbreak of violence between the Zionist colony and the neighboring Arab states had created
the impetus for claims to judicial exceptionlism. Yet the moment was temporary. In order to
expand its newfound control over space the Zionist project turned to the tools of urban
planning and cartography. Eyal Weizman writes,
“[a]rchitecture and planning were used as a continuation of war by other means. Like
the tank, the gun and the bulldozer, building material and infrastructure were used to
achieve tactical and strategic aims. It was urban warfare in which urbanism provided
not only the theatre of war but its weapons. This civilianization of military
organization in fact became the militarization of many spheres of life. War was only
over because now it was everywhere.”114
While archeology acted as the justification, architecture and cartography became the
scientific partners of Zionism’s physical expansion into the landscape of Palestine. Towards
its colonial ends cartography proved invaluable with its assumptions, “that the objects in the
world to be mapped are real and objective, and that they enjoy an existence independent of
the cartographer… that systematic observation and measurement offer the only route to
cartographic truth; and that this truth can be independently verified.”115 Maps had already
played a central role in bringing about the departure of the British imperial presence in
Mandated Palestine. In the numerous land divisions demarcated by both UN and British-lead
commissions the Zionists had usually agreed to the delineation- though always temporarily.
Reflecting on partition of Palestine, David Ben-Gurion would say, “[w]e shall accept a state
in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the
Jewish people and no external factor will limit them.”116 As the British departed the Zionist’s
malleable sense of a border was revealed,117 and the West Bank’s signification as the
114
Weizman, 2006: 17.
Harley, 1989: 4.
116
Chomsky, 1983: 180.
117
“The frontiers of the Occupied Territories are not rigid and fixed at all; rather, they are elastic, and in constant
transformation. The linear border, a cartographic imaginary inherited from the military and political spatiality of
the nation state has splintered into a multitude of temporary, transportable, deployable and removable bordersynonyms” (Wiezman, 2007: 6f.). “For the PA leadership and the international community, the boundary is a de
facto border; for Israel, it is a frontier. A border is a fixed line separating two proper sovereign political entities. A
frontier is more ambiguous and flexible, moving as demography moves” (Li, 2006: 50). “Control of the external
wrapper is essential for the Oslo strategy, because if the Palestinians control even one border crossing-and gain the
ability to maintain direct relations with the outside world-the internal lines of separation will become full-fledged
international borders, and Israel will lose its control over the passage of people and goods. Puncturing the external
115
17
heartland of their Biblical vision- as “Judea and Samaria”- is used as justification for the
Zionist fixation on expansion into the territory. Maps, furthermore, “merged the needs of a
sprawling suburbia with national security and political ambitions to push ever more Israelis
into the West Bank. “This ‘Biblical’ heartland of the West Bank was seen as sacred territory
and as a defensible frontier, a border without a line.”118 Being the “Western” project that it is,
Zionism utilized the tools of mapping as a “silent arbiter of power,” that has the potential and
the potency of passing unnoticed.119 Like so many colonial expeditions of the past,120 the
Zionist maps revealed only what was of interest and thus fulfilled a nationalist function of
abstracting and summarizing while silencing the acts of razing and re-creation of the
landscape in its way.121 The construction of “security roads,” “settlements,” “military zones,”
“nature preserves,” “checkpoints” and “security fences” created after Oslo provide one such
site of razing. These lines appear orderly and reasonable on a map of the “occupied
territories,” on the ground they have turned the West Bank into a complex grid of Zionist
control over the local inhabitants made “legal” in the Oslo process.
“‘It’s too dangerous,’ they said.
We asked them why.
‘The settlers,’ they said. ‘if you’re walking and they drive by they swerve and hit you. They
ran over Mazen. And if an army jeep comes they shoot. No one uses that road.’…
These were the beginning of new times, a new relationship to the land and the destruction of
the hills as I knew them.”122
In “Modern Western Society,” J. B. Harley writes,
“maps quickly became crucial to the maintenance of state power- to its boundaries,
to its commerce, to its internal administration, to control of populations, and to its
military strength. Mapping soon became the business of the state: cartography is early
nationalized.”123
The new de facto division following the Zionist land grab of 1948 that caused the
fragmentation of Palestinian society along geographic lines. Many of the Arab villages within
the new borders of the Zionist state were razed to the ground in an attempt to leave behind no
trace. Often the Zionists then re-planted these spaces with trees turning such areas into
protectorates. A five-star hotel in West Jerusalem is located on the site of Deir Yasin, the
razed Arab village that acts as a symbol of 1948. A nearby “peace” park consumes the
village’s former land. Neither place is marked. Elsewhere the trees were razed on account of
new Jewish-inhabited urban centers. Between 1987 and 1991 alone, Israeli forces uprooted at
least 120,000 trees as collective punishment against the Palestinian Intifada- an expression of
rejection of Zionist colonization.124 Every step of expansion was backed and confirmed by the
maps, reading these maps as objective inscriptions establishes truths divorced from history
and time. A contemporary example is the slinking line on a map running vertically between
Israel and the West Bank provides an impression of order and seems commensurate with the
idea of a “security fence.” The Israeli government’s website claims they take into account
“humanitarian, archaeological and environmental concerns.”125 Yet, visiting those sites
system will necessitate the establishment of a vast array of physical obstacles, crossing points and custom barriers
between the enclaves of the ‘internal separation,’ and will expose the absurdity of the tortuous and noncontiguous
borders of the ethnic cantons on which all sides of the permanent settlement are based (Benvenisti, 1999).
118
Weizman, 2006, 17.
119
Harley, 1989: 13.
120
Colonizers also utilized maps to divide “Latin America” (Mignolo, 1995: 219ff.), and “Africa” (Monmonier,
1991: 90).
121
Scott, 1998: 87.
122
Shehadeh, 2007: 164-166.
123
Harley, 1989: 12.
124
Human Rights Watch cited in Swedenburg, 2004: 74.
125
Securityfence.gov.il.
18
confirms a different reality, the concrete wall has consumed almost 10% of the land of the
1967 armistice line and has displaced or severed thousands of Palestinian farmers from their
land.
Figure 4: Order and Security: Revised Route of the Wall. 30 April 2006.
Language itself is another site of contestation, where the Zionist project has long had the
upper hand managing to retain the closure of a debate. When former Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon identifies a Palestinian refugee camp as a “habitat of this terror,”126 while
codifying razed Palestinian villages as “peace parks” and “natural protectorates” the Zionists
are winning the war of words. A further site of contestation is the codification of Palestinians
themselves. Thus, the first time a Zionist leader labeled the local inhabitants “Palestinians”
rather than “Arabs” was in an effort to distance them from their Arab neighbors who posed an
impending threat at the time. Israeli rhetoric altered the designation for Yasir Arafat and his
PLO associates from “terrorists” to “negotiation partners” in one crucial moment: when the
PLO finally gave in to their demands to acknowledge the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
The Zionist project’s razing and relentless refashioning of Palestine’s landscape maintains
its main goal of creating “facts on the ground.” The emphasis on the domination of space
culminated in Oslo. This “peace” agreement transformed the very raison d’être of the PLO
movement that had been resisting Zionism’s colonial existence. Edward Said described the
agreement to the Oslo Accords as consenting “to forget and renounce our history of loss and
dispossession by the very people who have taught everyone the importance of not forgetting
the past.”127 In the battle over the past, this Palestinian acquiescence proved to be a critical
turning point in deepening the fluidity of the Palestinian claim to the past while affirming the
126
127
Weizman, 2006: 8.
Gregory, 2004: 98.
19
fixity of the Zionist narrative. This “act of surrender”128- in the hope of reaching closer to
legitimacy through the attainment of a Palestinian state- accelerated the deemed “legal”
razing of Palestine. Yet, simultaneously The PLO’s desire for legitimacy embarked them on a
separate path of refashioning of landscape.
128
Shehadeh, 2007: 170.
20
Chapter 2:
FATEH: MYTHIFICATION OF A NATION-STATE: Re-Ordering of Time and Space
“[T]he emergence of nationalism in Palestine is an integral part of the Westernization story. It
is written into the story of modernization that a society will be nationalized under the
influence of Western modernizer, only to rebel against the modernizer in the name of Western
ideals such as the right to independence and freedom.”
- Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine
“…becoming excited not by what is there, but by what its image has come to signify for
you… the pornography of national symbolism.”
- Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape
Waiting for a bus to fill up for the ride from Hebron to Jerusalem can include a long wait.
After all, only a few of Hebron’s citizens possess an Israeli-issued ID card that permits them
entry to Jerusalem. After we had finally filled all the seats and were just beginning on our
way one of the passengers- a spirited white-haired man- asked his somewhat uncomfortable
fellow passengers who had created the Palestinian flag. “The British” eventually came the
answer from the man himself after no one had been able to appease his query.
All communities are “‘countries of words’ insofar as the rituals of inscribing borders,
picturing territories and populations, and thematizing issues salient to those terrains and the
communities believed to occupy them occur within discourse.”129 The “Gaza Strip”- like so
many geographical categories- was brought about by violence. In the course of searing its
geographical and historical landscape the Zionist project would introduce the Gaza Strip as a
globally recognized category proving that, “[n]aming is a powerful weapon of the
cartographic propagandist.”130 The absurd discursivity of the “Gaza Strip” as a spatial entity,
highlighted in chapter one in light of an imagined Zionist narrative and practices of erasure, is
doubled here by the PLO’s presentation of a desired “state” as the “chosen instrument of
change” framed by a discursive Palestiniananness.131 These two modes of the discursive are
inextricably linked by the PLO’s provision of a locus of identification for all those who “felt
that their lives had been violated, disrupted and displaced as a result of Zionism’s
successes.”132 Here the PLO narrative acts as a mythico-history that reconstitutes a “moral
order of the world,” by presenting itself as a project in opposition to the Zionist enemy as well
as an unlikely source of such resistance and identification.133 This dream built on the
conception of the Palestinian as the “figure of lack,” striving in the image of the colonial
other in a circuitous cycle of a “mimetic mode.”134 I will assess the transformation of space as
a political tool and its relationship to time in the production and re-creation of history. I will
ask not what history is but how it is made (time) and how this production re-makes landscape
(space). I acknowledge that there is a danger in limiting my analysis to the Gaza Strip, yet I
will engage the risks of undermining the contiguity of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in order
to highlight the fabricated nature of territorial categories. I aim to provide signposts for
thought beyond the hegemonic conception of a territorial state.
Dipesh Chakrabarty considers Europe to be the “silent referent in historical knowledge
itself.” The concept, coined in Europe, has become an educational standard almost globally,
synthetically placing Europe at the center of time and space. Yet, Chakrabarty lays the fault
for the European hegemonic influence not only on modern imperialism, for “(third-world)
nationalism have, by their collaborative venture and violence” made that very construct
129
Bowman, 1994: 3.
Monmonier, 1991: 110.
131
Sayegh, 1997: x.
132
Bowman, 2003: 326.
133
Malkki, 1995: 55.
134
Chakrabarty, 1992; Bhabha, 1987: 317-26.
130
21
universal.135 In its battle for legitimacy both internal and external the PLO has mimicked the
modern idol of the nation-state, thus partaking in the “distribution of human species into
groups, the subdivision of the population into subgroups, and the establishment of a
biological caesura between the ones and the others.”136 By imitating its colonial occupierparadoxically also the source of their legitimacy- the PLO engages in its other’s practices of
spacializing control, a division of spatial landscape into compartments. Though the PLO
never achieves its aim of political sovereignty, they practice sovereignty within the space of
the Gaza Strip in what Achille Mbembe deems, “the capacity to define who matters and who
does not, who is disposable and who is not.”137 The organization of space thus can be
conceived of as a text that “talks about” or “works over,” “spatial representations” that are
both “product and producer.”138
In this chapter I will assess the role of the PLO- and specifically Fateh as the hegemonic
party therein- in reshaping the landscape of the Gaza Strip in terms of time and space. I will
assess the trajectory of the transformation of the PLO- with its gaze set westward- from a
liberation struggle to a nation-state project. I will ask, in line with Chakrabarty, if their actions
legitimize the endeavor of both their occupying power and the global statist project. I will
engage with Western political philosophers Hobbes and Weber on the legitimacy of
governance within the nation-state paradigm, and then drawing on Laclau, Mouffe and
Poulantzas relating the role of classes in the formation of states.
Intermittently I will draw upon personal participant-observation carried out in the Gaza
Strip and interviews with PLO members and their critics. I will then assess the PA’s rhetoric
of the “savage” aimed at buttressing its position vis-à-vis its constituency. I will subsequently
highlight this “liberation movement’s” transformation of the spatial landscape of Palestine in
relation to force (police, prison, security, citizenship) and economy (private property, trade
flows, border control) drawing largely on interviews and engaging existent analysis. Towards
these ends I will sound out the utility of binaries such as realism/ utopianism,139 sanity/
insanity,140 legality/ criminality,141 legitimacy/ illegitimacy,142 as discursive formations- mere
habits of thought- with which the PLO have painted their rule of the Gaza Strip.143
2.1. FROM VILLAGE TO CITY, PEASANT TO CITIZEN: The Nationalism Myth
“A human without a nation is without purpose.”
- Abu Karim, Gaza City, 2007
“The nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin.”
- Homi Bhaba, Nation and Narration
“Nationalism as a concept is seen as encompassing the lives of everyone in a given land; in
reality, it is a story of the few not the many, of men not women, of the wealthy not the poor.”
- Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine
We cannot speak of a unitary development of nationalism in the Ottoman region of Palestine
for there was no entity named “Palestine,” nor a group called “Palestinians.” The nationalism
construct emerged in urban centers facing much contention. Meanwhile, following the
breakup of the Ottoman Empire, religion, rather than an idea of a nationalist group structure
135
Chakrabarty, 1992: 20.
Mbembe, 2003: 17.
137
Mbembe, 2003: 27.
138
Harvey, 1989: 216.
139
Massad, 2003: 105.
140
Trioullot, 1995: 87.
141
Bayart et al, 1999.
142
Mbembe, 2001.
143
Halbwachs, 1992: 51ff.
136
22
proved to be “the only idiom able to unite a peasantry fragmented by regional, factional, kin
and clan allegiances… the very name ‘Palestine’ was new and uncomfortable.”144 While
Zionism came from afar to appropriate land, “the Palestinians came from the opposite
direction, from intimate communion with the land to perceptions of a homeland in abstract
‘nation-building’ terms.”145 This process entailed the reappropriation of the colonial model of
the state in “the sphere of the imaginary,” thus the state’s aim of overcoming old hierarchies
was reversed, consolidating those the colonial state had initiated.146 The Zionists’ destruction
of hundreds of villages caused the loss of old forms of identification and belonging, while a
new sense of commonality emerged, that of the refugee.147 As the Gaza Strip’s population
increased by adding over 220,000 “refugees” to the existent 60,000 “residents” a new rift
emerged between the two communities, which formulated divisive identifications of
“residents” and “refugees.” The nationalist paradigm would go on to formulate divisions
between supporters of a-sulta/the authority (PNA), over and against all those that opposed its
formulating treaty.
In a letter written in 1918 Jerusalem intellectual Khalil Sakakini describes King Faysal as
the herald of Arab Nationalism and the one who “made us raise our heads high and awakened
our hopes from their slumber.”148 This depiction is one side of the debate of the post-Ottoman
Empire, which pits Euro-centric nation-statism against a vision for a supra-nationalism of an
Islamic umma in the vein of the Ottoman Empire. The latter stream sought to base a new
national identity, at least loosely on an Islamic heritage, while the modernist trend advocated
that Islam had been corrupted and needed to adapt to modern trends in order to achieve past
civilizational greatness. The idea of Arab Nationalism emerged as a reaction to the rise of
Turkish nationalism of the Young Turks, appealing to a glorious Arab past and seeing itself as
the replacement of an ailing Ottoman Empire.149 The division was largely driven by a
fragmented vision of leadership, with an old guard inspired by a local nationalism seeking an
independent Palestinian state. The young guard was driven by Arab Nationalism committed
to Palestine as a part of an Arab entity, Greater Syria in a sense replacing the Ottoman
Empire.150 The old guard, seeking to retain their place in society, was more powerful and in
their espousal of nation-state nationalism were living proof of the hegemonic impact of
western civilization. Meanwhile Arab unity in Damascus began to disintegrate as regional
interests increasingly emerged. Faysal’s prioritizing of Syria at the cost of the Palestinian
community as he courted Zionist interests at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference significantly
destabilized Faysal’s vision of Arab unity.151 Even prior to the disintegration of the Ottoman
Empire Euoropean colonizers had stood awaiting their share of a pie they desired. Ultimately,
it was the French and British dismemberment of the Levant that crushed any vision of Arab
Nationalism. July 1920 ended a dream of Greater Syria as the French disassembled Faysal’s
government and consequently forced each of the regional participating parties to align with
Western conceptions of nationalism. Many local political leaders only begrudgingly and
painfully resigned themselves to a vision of local nationalism, their aspirations for a pan-Arab
entity having been still-born due to England and France’s opposition to such an idea. Sykes
and Picot’s crude lines on their map demarcated the Arab vision by force.
Fragments of this debate reappear in the post-nakba Palestinian political scene. The PLO
was constructed in 1964 with strong backing from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasir
with the intention of aiding in his battle for regional sovereignty. Despite some of its
members having their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood they revealed “no visible Islamic
144
Bowman, 2003: 322.
Benvenisti, 2000: 8.
146
Mbembe, 2001: 40.
147
Nassar, 2002: 35.
148
Muslih, 1988: 186.
149
Muslih, 1988: 212.
150
Muslih, 1988: 176.
151
Muslih, 1988: 203.
145
23
coloration” in order to adapt to the dominant political milieu of the time.152 Yet, the new
young leaders who would early on take over the leadership of the PLO had other intentions
with their own desires of legitimization. The defeat of Israel’s Arab assailants in 1967
provides the PLO with the position of power from which to negotiate in order to fulfill their
nationalist aims.153 Taking the helm was Abu Ammar, who embodied the “mystery of the
process of transubstantiation whereby the spokesperson becomes the group that he
expresses.”154 His ability to bring the Palestinian cause to the world’s attention portrayed his
position in speaking “of a group, on behalf of a group.”155 As spokesperson Abu Ammar
“surreptitiously posits the existence of the group in question, institutes the group, through the
magical operation that is inherent in any act of naming.”156 During the late 60s and 70s the
PLO became a symbol of resistance both regionally and beyond with a significant network of
funding and international volunteer fighters supporting their cause.157 The PLO became a
symbol for resistance not just among Palestinians, but for the region. The battle of Karameh
in 1968 pushed the PLO onto the regional political scene. Despite inciting heavy losses the
roughly 300 PLO fighters managed to stand their ground and succeeded to achieve a Zionist
retreat. Karameh is both the name of the village that was defended and the Arabic word for
honor. Throughout the Arab world the fighters were seen to have “defended Karameh on
behalf of them all.”158
By 1969 the PLO Revolutionary Council made use of this power by altering their intentions
of “liberating Palestine” to the “establishment of a secular, democratic state” in a part of
Palestine.159 This alteration follows a predicted trajectory of “liberation” struggles whereby
the nation-state is the only possible outcome. The legal doctrine of uti possedetis reinforced
this trend by ensuring that the nation state form was “the only way to enter the world beyond
and be recognized as a rightful player in it.”160 By the time Egypt’s image is shattered in the
1973 war the PLO experiences an upsurge of popularity and makes public its commitment to
an aim of Palestinian statehood. Reflecting on the 1974 PNC Council Edward Said described
a new notion that was put forward claiming that Palestinian nationalism could be recuperated
immediately by a “Palestinian national authority” under whose authority any portion of
“liberated land” would go. Said reflected, “[t]hus a new trajectory was established toward the
idea of partitioning Palestine.” The PNC members who espoused the new plot remained
vague, never speaking of “partition” and continuing a narrative of “liberation” though
replacing the use of “military” and “armed struggle” with rhetoric of a “political” solution.161
In the Order of Things Foucault muses over his laughter over “all the familiar landmarks of
my thought - our thought, the thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame
the wild profusion of existing things.”162 The “unfamiliar” juxtaposed to this stance is that
which questions and resists the “familiar landmarks” of our time. The young leaders
gathering at the 1974 PNC meeting revealed their inability to continue espousing the
“unfamiliar,” ceding to the constructed trope of “realism” in form of state-building and
152
A July 1957 memorandum from Khalil Al-Wazir (cited in Hroub, 2002: 24).
Cobban, 1984: 36.
154
Bourdieu, 1985: 740.
155
Bourdieu, 1985: 741.
156
Bourdieu, 1985: 741.
157
Shiblak, 1997: 267. M. E. Selim cited in Bitar, 2008: 6.
158
Cobban, 1984: 42.
159
Cobban, 1984: 16ff. The PLO would hold to a demand for state, “no matter how small” for the sake of the
“integrity of national movement” which had never existed, at the cost of the land. This transformation reveals a
cyclical logic based in foreign ideals. The desire for state is justified for the sake of the nation; this desire is what
destroys the latter.
160
Pahuja, 2005: 464.
161
Said, 1989: 9.
162
Foucault, 1970: xiv.
153
24
breaking with their previous revolutionary “utopianism.”163 Its political aspirations lead the
PLO to give in to the modern legal temptation of territory- “the crucial diacratic of
sovereignty”- over soil.164
According to international legal logic, “the only way to decolonize was through selfdetermination as a nation state.”165 Thus, the liberation movement’s call would transform
itself from a vision of national liberation and its anti-colonial movement to one of nationbuilding and modernization, striving for liberal democracy rather than rebelling against a
system of domination.166 In this stance the PLO stopped thinking the externally deemed
“unfamiliar”- after all the refugees sought for return to their land not a state- while developing
a vision compliant with the familiar, which entailed the foreign imagining of a nation-state
accompanied by economic opportunism that appeased the local economic elite. The legal
labeling of the Palestinian exiles as “refugees” automatically places them- their exile, their
existence and their hoped for return- within the rubric of territorialism and nation-state as the
“familiar” solution within the “national order of things.”167 Achille Mbembe expounds on this
process,
“[i]n the postcolony the commandement seeks to institutionalize itself, to achieve
legitimation and hegemony, in the form of fetish. The signs, vocabulary, and
narratives that the commandement produces are meant not merely to be symbols; they
are officially invested with a surplus of meanings that are not negotiable that one is
officially forbidden to depart from or challenge. To ensure that no such challenge
takes place, the champions of state power invent entire constellations of ideas; they
adopt a distinct set of cultural repertoires and powerfully evocative concepts; but they
also resort, if necessary, to the systematic application of pain.”168
The endeavor of convincing the public through rhetoric and violence set the PLO on a
slippery slope towards secret negotiations at Oslo where any semblance of legitimacy was
lost once and for all by the blatant revelation that the liberation of Palestine- return- was no
longer a priority. This shift in prioritization points to a central motif, a growing class rift
intensified by the lure of potential statehood and the subsequent criminalization process of a
deemed legitimate leadership.169 The nation-state acted as a powerful mobilizing force, which
begs the question, how to mobilize without communal identification. Yet, the definitive
problem that arises from such pragmatic thinking is that the prioritization of national struggle
has the tendency- as proven in the Palestinian case- to sideline class struggle. As elites
become the ruling class representing an external power- whether a locally based colonizer or
distanced economic imperial power- the drive of the popular struggle is co-opted by the
desired prestige of a “pragmatic, pro PLO urban elite,” which one Fateh member labeled the
“economic party” within Fateh.170 Here, state is not reducible to government; rather the
makeup of state power includes individuals who are part of an economic elite.171
163
Massad, 2006: 105.
Appadurai, 1996: 46; 48.
165
Pahuja, 2005: 464.
166
Massad, 2003: 105.
167
Malkki, 1995: 6.
168
Mbembe, 2003: 103.
169
Bayart et al, 1999.
170
Brynen, 1995: 36; White, 2009.
171
Trouillot, 2001: 127 n.5.
164
25
Figure 5: Yafa was renamed as Yafo, and the lemon tree is gone from that backyard, but
it’s so deep-rooted in her mind, its fragrance so overwhelming, that it’s hard to image what
that famous handshake on the South Lawn of the White House could have meant to her. It
is hard to imagine any connection between these two images that were mutually
superimposed: the lemon tree of memories and the CNN-made image of the two political
leaders, representing Yafa and Yafo, respectively, hoping , with a semi-nudged handshake,
to draw some defining lines between the one homeland and the two states, totally leaving
out the sweet ‘n sour question of lemon trees.172
The first Intifada- starting in 1987- entailed a process of self-nationalization that is
necessary for mobilization for resistance of occupation yet also brings about a crisis of
legitimacy.173 As the government-in-exile lacked control over any form of state apparatuses
required to disseminate nationalism and ideas of statehood and thus had to rely on inside
leadership and the masses to carry out this task.174 Despite strong coordination existing
between the outside and inside leadership, Ziad Abu Amr claims that the Intifada “bails out
the PLO.”175 The exiled organization soon thereafter capitalizes on the moment for territorial
sovereignty. At the 19th session of the PNC, the PLO renounces “armed resistance” and
recognizes UN resolutions 242 and 338. In November of 1988 the PLO announced the
independence of the Palestinian state on 1967 borders. This moment represented a
culmination of acceding to the “familiar.” When Arafat claimed the importance of acceding to
“international legality,” it proved that “the liberation idea [had] slipped from sight except as a
historical cum rhetorical gesture.”176 Yet, until this assimilation to global legal norms was
combined with a recognition of the state of Israel’s right to exist, this step lead the latter to
openly admit that the PLO had to be destroyed “utterly because of its representative status.”177
Nicos Poulantzas claims that such a process entails an “effect of isolation” whereby in a
diametrical opposition to the illusory unification of the “state”-project individuals are
removed from within their social groupings and atomized. Thus the state is to conceal any
class association in order to buttress the conception of the individual as part of a unified
economic whole under the nation-state’s shroud. Poulantzas writes,
“the juridical and ideological structures produce… the effect of concealing from
those agents in a particular way the fact that their relations are class relations… In
this way the capitalist state constantly appears as the strictly political unity of an
economic struggle, which is in itself a sign of this isolation. It represents itself as the
representative of the ‘general interest’ of competing and divergent economic interests
172
Shammas, 1996: 470.
See chapter 4.I for further analysis of the first Intifada.
174
Swedenburg, 1991: 158, 166, 178.
175
Abu Amr, 1990: 5.
176
Said, 1989: 10.
177
Said, 1989: 10. This Israeli stance was only unequivocally revised when they deemed the PLO to no longer
represent the Palestinians (see Massad, 2006, 98 and § I.A).
173
26
which conceal their class character from the agents, who experience them… The
people/ nation is institutionally fixed as the ensemble of ‘citizens’ or ‘individuals’
whose unity is represented by the capitalist state.”178
Oslo unraveled economic dynamics that are a result of political pseudo-“‘independence’
built on the remains of a power structure imposed from the outside.”179 The language game of
the couplet of the sought after “nation-state” further embeds the deceit of the ruling elites who
act in their own and the capitalist core’s interests as a deemed “national” project.180 Thus
Nabil Shaath, a member of the PLO economic elite, would be able to paint Oslo as bringing
“complete parity” between Israelis and Palestinians.181 In reality the outcome of Oslo
provided the likes of Shaath with economic opportunities similar to those of Israelis, but for
the average Palestinian there was no parity to speak of. On the contrary, the state’s constant
gaze towards the economic core creates a dependency- the periphery states on core states, and
the majority of the population as periphery on the core of the urban elite. This in turn
necessitates a locally perceived legitimacy through consent. The stark distinction here to
consensus is the dialectical relationship of coercion and consent.182 In the state-game, consent
is a necessary component. This is where violence enters the picture. The agents of the state
utilize the “entity’s” perceived legitimacy to use violence in order to ascertain the very
consent needed to buttress its illusory legitimacy. In this permanent tension between
centrifugal dependency and centripetal use of force the true nature of the beast of the “state”
is revealed, confirming that “as the past is not past, so the ‘postcolonial’ continues to be
colonial.”183
2.1.1. LEGITIMIZATION AND OSLO: Economy of A Debate
“Oslo could lead to a Palestinian state
or a catastrophic liquidation of the Palestinian cause.”
- Abu Mazen
“The symbolic power of agents, understood as the power to make things seen- theorein- and
to make things believed, to produce and impose the legitimate or legal classification, in fact
depends… on the position occupied in the space.”
- Pierre Bourdieu, The Social Space And the Genesis of Groups
There was much rejoicing on the Palestinian street when PLO fighters returned to Gaza in the
summer of 1994 following the Oslo negotiations. Even those in the starkest opposition to the
principles of Oslo sensed a certain pride and respect as they watched “Palestinian” soldiers
parading a previously- Israeli deemed- illegal Palestinian flag.184 Such mythic moments
caused rise to notions of statehood with widespread- though short-lived- affects of unity. A
certain imaginary was achieved. But the celebration was short-lived. The divisive nature of
the intended state-building process was soon to follow as Fateh consolidated its power and in
so doing sought to wipe out any opposition. Israel had succeeded at deepening its legitimacy
178
Poulantzas, 1968: 130; 133.
Trouillot, 1990: 23.
180
Trouillot, 1990: 23ff. What if the correspondence between statehood and nationhood… was itself
historical? Indeed, there are no theoretical grounds on which to assert the necessity of that correspondence
(Trouillot 2001: 127).
181
Said, 1996: 8.
182
Trouillot, 1990: 22; 188.
183
Gregory, 2004: 6f; Trouillot, 2003: 22. These twin concepts express the division between two desires, on the
one hand to join a global regime of neoliberal markets which leads to a centrifugal economic dependency on
external bodies due Palestine’s existence on the periphery of the capitalist world. On the other hand, a centripetal
dynamic conveys a stance that is “inherently inward-looking to exercise primary control and derive their
momentum from dynamics of coercion and consent within that space” (Trouillot, 2003: 22).
184
Jumea, Subheya, interview with author, 22 January 2008. Gaza City.
179
27
in the eyes of the on looking world- by having the PLO recognize its right to exist.185
Meanwhile, the PLO exchanged its right to legitimate resistance with a promise to engage in
negotiations,186 while acceding to Israel’s meager recognition of it as the “representative of
the Palestinians.” Not only had Israel succeeded in reaching an agreement that lacked even a
semblance of equal exchange, it also managed to recognize the PLO’s legitimacy to represent
a “people” at the precise moment that it had stopped representing a majority of
Palestinians.187 Part of the PLO’s failure in accepting the familiar trend of representation
entailed its neglect of representation being in flux. This undermines the very raison d’être of a
modern nation-state, whereby in Hobbes’ formulation the sovereign is to represent public
consent. Bit by bit the PLO found themselves faced with a people, which did not conform to
its image of it. “Almost before anyone knew it, a unique way of doing things had taken hold
in the territories along with a new vision of the population as a self-propelled body that was
both leading and waging the struggle against Israel on its own.”188
Max Weber depicts the government as the authority that holds a monopoly on the
“legitimate use of physical force.”189 In the milieu of fractional rivalry and a search for
political authority the PLO intended to use the state as a tool to legitimize its use of violence.
Yet, suddenly the weapon that had been pointed outward in a stance of resistance was turned
inward as the PA under the Oslo scheme was designated to maintain security over an
occupied people devoted to liberation. The PLO returned to a still occupied Palestine in the
form of the Palestinian Authority in a counter-intuitive mode, not to lead a revolution, but to
end it.190 General Nasir Yusef would promise that his first “urgent task” would be to contain
the spread of arms, to which Hamas responded that they would not disarm “as long as the
occupation continues.”191 This facet would frame the transition of the revolutionary
movement to governing a para-state. The process that provided the PLO its authority to
monopolize violence also undermined the violent underpinnings of its raison d'être and
thereby de-legitimized the movement in the eyes of the “people” it claimed and sought to
represent.
The question of legitimacy needs to be explored deeper at this juncture. Hobbes’ conception
of the legitimacy of a sovereign in the nation-state is tied to a duty towards a constituency. A
representing sovereign is to enter a contract by which the first must provide the latter with
security. In the Palestinian state of exception under occupation, the Hobbesian conception of
sovereignty is absent due to Oslo’s terms whereby Israel retains true sovereignty as a colonial
entity and the PLO receives only a semblance thereof. Without complete sovereignty the PLO
was not able to return its expected duty of providing security or protection of its “citizens”
whether it be physical security or in forms of economic or social security. Yet, in Foucault
and Agamben’s conception of sovereignty through the utilization of tools of control, Gazans
became vulnerable to the PLO as sovereign.192 Though the PLO lacked sovereignty over
territory, they did practice a state-like sovereignty over the Gazan population through the
institutions of security forces, prisons and courts. Representation, a further central tenet of
185
The root of the word “category” is kategoresthai, meaning to “accuse publicly,” for this the spokesperson/
subject needs a platform, for the colonized it is the emulated image of the colonizer, for the Palestinian it is the
state (Bourdieu 1985: 729). The Westernization story here entices the very post-colonial desire (Pappe 2004: 6).
186
The use of the discourse of ‘negotiations,’ a central tenet of liberal peace, despite Israel’s neglect to engage in
negotiations calls attention to Israel’s place of domination. Despite the peaceable language, Israel continues to
break all rules of negotiation by proceeding in its national vision, annexing Palestinian land and uprooting all life
in its way. In this vein the program of the 13 th Palestinian government document reads, “[t]he formation of a
democratically-elected leadership that enjoys popular and factional support, as well as regional and
international recognition” (PNA 2009: 8).
187
Massad, 2006: 98.
188
Bowman, 1994: 31n.50.
189
Cited in Held 1983: 111.
190
Robinson, 1997: 177.
191
Weinberger, 1995: 20.
192
See Mbembe, 2003: 1n.1.
28
political sovereignty, proved void in various instances. It is the deeply flawed foundation of
Oslo- empowered by their occupier not their “people”- that provided the PLO with
representative power on behalf of “Palestinians.” Another such moment of revelation is the
2006 elections whereby the PLO lost its electoral representation during internationally
monitored elections, yet retained sovereignty- in the Foucauldian sense- over the Gazan street
until Hamas took it by force. This state of exception within which sovereignty is practiced in
the Gaza Strip brings about perpetual contest over power, which the very process of suffrage
and sovereignty are meant to overcome. Any semblance of a contract between a people and a
sovereign is devastated while providing the impetus for the image of a “failed state,” where
such a “condition” is considered an internal/domestic problem, which like a sick body needs
curing.193 This stance is a red herring that distracts from the systemic role of external players
in bringing about internal fragmentation, and more importantly the impossibility of
application of a nation-state narrative in the Palestinian context. The true losers in this process
are the Gazans who, having been lured into a striving for state, receive in exchange only a
dictatorial power without the ability to return the function of a sovereign, while continuing to
live under the occupation of a territorial colonial sovereign. Hobbes claimed that “covenants
without the sword are but words,” in Gaza two swords oppose each other and still impose
their respective bearer’s will on a population. The provision of law as a limitation of power of
both swordsmen is suspended under the condition of the Gaza Strip as a state of exception.194
At stake in the Oslo accords was not the formation, but the disintegration of state. In this
sense Abu Ammar and the PLO became the entirely real substitute for an entirely symbolic
being- a unified Palestinian nation, which did not exist.195 “The existence of a Palestinian
government created a divide, Abu Ammar created a phony (mushawih) version of a nation,”
says Gazan mental health physician and independent political leader Iyad el-Sarraj. For the
Palestinians the ensuing start of a pseudo-state building process entailed the centralization of
political power, the influence of trans-national bodies like the IMF and World Bank and
adapting to their rules and conditions, the legitimization of violence- within the Palestinian
areas- of a single party rivaling other opposition, and the challenge of forming moral and
legal legitimacy of political power and military force. The application of this foreign
Nomenklatur- police force, courts, prisons etc- had the direct repercussion of deep division
within Palestinian society. Overnight PLO-affiliated resistance fighters and fida’yeen became
policemen and soldiers who acted as Israel’s subcontracted security force thus discarding
arms of resistance for arms of vassalage. The difference between state agent and resistance
fighter is often a slight one.196 In the moment of Oslo, Fateh’s banner depicting the message
of the liberation struggle- under which the resistance had fought for years- including arms and
the entirety of historic Palestine became anachronistic revealing the schizophrenia in the
movement’s core values.197
193
Hill, 2005: 149.
Agamben, 2005.
195
Massad, 2006: 102.
196
Das, 2007: 219.
197
Abu Amr, 1990: 5.
194
29
Figure 6: “The Palestinian National Liberation Movement: Revolution until Victory”
The PA took on the responsibilities of a municipality without the reward of territorial
sovereignty or recognition as a player in the international playing field of nation-states. Neve
Gordon refers to this trend as “outsourcing,” whereby Israel is able to “abdicate social and
moral responsibility… by dodging legal prosecution and evading the ‘shaming technique’
utilized by human rights organizations.”198 Meanwhile, the Israeli demand for the precondition of the Palestinian Authority as a transitory entity mirrored Israel’s constant
transitory legal games. Israel had established a territory whose outline would remain legally
in flux, now the Zionist state donned the very legitimacy of the PLO a legal temporality.
Israel had succeeded yet again in retaining the ambiguity of its juridical position vis-à-vis any
Palestinian spatial entity, trying to paint itself as “not quite an occupier,” while the
Palestinians remained just “somewhat less than sovereign.”199 All these changes occurred
with what an Israeli commentator considered, “indications that the agreement is built on a
tacit assumption that it will never be carried into effect… Israel supports a process intended to
prevent any chance of a democratic Palestinian entity.”200
The Oslo agreement initiated a process whereby many Palestinians “found that enemies had
become allies while others discovered that former allies were now antagonists. Between Oslo
and 28 September 2000 those in and affiliated with the PNA in large part acted as though the
antagonism with Israel had ended.”201 PLO advisor Hanan Ashrawi claimed that at least Oslo
had “put Palestine on the map.”202 The Bantustanization of Palestine and the self-destructive
nature of the pseudo-state-building process that emerge beg the question: on whose map was
Palestine placed? And more importantly, of what significance is a place on this map?
2.1.2. OTHERING: Nationalism’s Need for A Savage
“[T]he ultimate expression of sovereignty resides, to a large degree, in the power and the
capacity to dictate who may live and who must die.”
- Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics
They use verses from Quran to justify verses, used them out of context. They convince their
members with such certainty that they can tell members to kill and they will do it. Convince
them that there is no punishment and the Imam at the mosque will be punished in their place.
They are prepared to kill with ease. These aren’t the people that represent the religion. Does
the hadith say burn cars, kill, kidnap? They lie. In the first Intifada I said those that enter
198
Gordon, 2000: 322.
Li, 2006: 50.
200
Cited in Shahak, 1993.
201
Bowman, 2003: 327.
202
Cited in Massad, 2003: 111.
199
30
elections commit haram shara3an, they condemned those that voted in the elections., then
they changed their position so that those that don’t vote are kuffar (heretics).203
In “Hegemony and Socialist Strategy” Laclau and Mouffe posit the position of antagonism
as a main cause of a deemed constitutive identity.204 Thus, a required act of antagonism by an
other is necessary to solidify oneself as the other of that antagonist.205 While liberation was
their raison d’être, Israel had acted as that antagonist for the PLO. The movement now needed
any opposition as antagonist to justify its having entered the negotiation process presented as
a “path to peace,” as well as to consolidate its internal legitimization. Those that did not
recognize this violence as authority were outlawed and deemed savage in an all too familiar
mode. The primary target in such suppressive tactics were Islamists who opposed the
underpinnings of the Oslo process and continued their program of militant resistance, political
mobilization- primarily Hamas and Jihad Islami- in spite of the PA. This relationship of
domination and power, allowed for “[p]erceptions of a violence afflicting a diverse range of
persons [to] give rise to a concept of a ‘national enemy’ and, through that concept, to the idea
of solidarity with those whom that enemy opposes.”206 According to one Israeli analyst the
new PA forces were “expected to frequently descend upon the mosques affiliated with
Hamas, in order to detain on the spot and interrogate everyone with a beard… to emulate the
[Israeli] Border Guards.”207 Thus as the PLO developed in the image of its colonizer it took
on its colonizer’s enemies as its own. On October 11 1994 after Hamas operatives abducted
an Israeli border guard, PA security agencies aided the IDF in locating the kidnappers while
arresting over 400 Hamas members. The incident caused widespread questioning of the PA’s
legitimacy.208 Terrorism suddenly became a frequent element of PLO rhetoric against their
opposition, leading to crisis of identification as opposition groups increasingly identified the
PA at best as dictators, at worst, as occupiers. The PLO’s colonial emulation perpetuated the
already existent trend of deepening division.
II. A RE-ORDERING OF SPACE: Fateh’s Panopticon
“The aspiration to such uniformity and order alerts us to the fact that modern statecraft is
largely a project of internal colonization… The builders of the modern nation-state do not
merely describe, observe, and map; they strive to shape a people and landscape that will fit
their techniques of observation.”
- James Scott, Seeing Like A State
“As far as we are concerned, we are a Palestinian State.”
- Arij Al-Awda, Palestinian Legal Affairs, Ramallah Governorate
At the secret negotiations in Oslo PLO representatives had engaged with their colonizer in a
violent re-mapping of Palestine. Here spaces were separated, categorized, named and seared
from each other in the search for “peace” and “sovereignty.” The first would remain a pipe
dream while attainment of sovereignty would remain a rhetorical mirage. Meanwhile, Israel
retained sovereignty over most land, while the unequally shared authority of remaining areas
remained within the rubric of prioritization of Israeli “security.” Behind closed doors space
was re-allotted to PLO forces most of whom were still in exile. The division of space into
areas A, B, B-, B+, C and H1 and H2 entailed a crass prioritization of urban centers of power
over the land of Palestinian farmers. Possibly the harshest critique voiced against the Oslo
Accords was its silence on the issue of refugees. Postponing this core matter to a later date
revealed again the secondary nature of refugee land over the territorial and urban vision for a
nation-state. This trend emulated the modernization theory driving the Zionist project. The
203
Eid, Interview with author, 26 March 2007.
Laclau and Mouffe, 1985.
205
Bowman, 2003: 319.
206
Bowman, 2003: 320.
207
Cited in Shahak, 1993.
208
Weinberger, 1995: 24.
204
31
divisions within Palestinian society again came to the fore at this juncture as the lure of the
lucrative economic nature for a select Palestinian urban elite became a driving force in the
realization of the agreement. Further rhetoric of “long-term economic development” in a hope
of addressing the crime of annexed Palestinian farmland continues to reveal itself to be a
liberal fiction. Furthermore, the fighters that returned to Palestine drunk on visions of
accomplished statehood would soon engage in a panopticon of security and control on the
local population from whom the movement had largely become estranged.
2.2.1. BORDERS, POLICE, COURTS, IDs, PRISONS: State of Exception As Rule
“Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception.”
- Carl Schmitt
Leaving Gaza requires one to walk through a long tunnel made up of turnstiles, X-ray
machines, gates, cages and passport controls. This past Wednesday I found the tunnel ending
abruptly ahead of me, a crudely fashioned wall bared me from the usual way of entry, instead
an opening to the right lead to a place unknown. I turned the corner and found myself in an
Orwellian passage leading to a huge building with four automatic doors that were shut tight.
Along this fenced in passageway runs an anachronistic, medieval ditch, beyond it a mound
made of rubble and dirt of the once magnificently fruitful region of Beit Hanoun. Today,
much of the town lies in disrepair and its surrounding land remains green but empty of the
life that once grew there. The caged passages are adorned with security cameras and buzzing
speakers reminding every passer by that yes, someone, somewhere is watching. Along the way
I met a Palestinian businessman who owns a clothing factory in Gaza. Mohamed had a bad
back. He was leaning against the fence and breathing heavily. I asked if he needed any help
and walked next to him slowly, when suddenly he took a hold of my hand, making use of the
extra support, we had about 300 meters left to go.
At the sliding gates that opened to a yet unknown world to us, stood nine other such
businessmen. I noticed one of them looking around for a video camera to ascertain if we had
been spotted waiting there. An odious sign informed the travelers that bags would be
searched. The sign apologized in advance for any inconvenience. In big letters it then read,
“no weapons allowed”, security, it seemed to imply was the purpose for this momentous
experience.209
Under the guidelines of Oslo liberation fighters were to be turned into policemen, secret
police agents and state bureaucrats were to create “public order” and a plethora of further
security organs were to provide “internal security.” The PA began building its institutions and
functioning more like a state than its cosignatories had expected. The new PA apparatuses
would begin to work as “police borders, producing its people, constructing its citizens,
defining its capitals, monuments, cities, waters and soils, and by constructing its locales of
memory and commemoration, such as graveyards and cenotaphs, mausoleums and
museums.”210 One of these measures was the issuing of ID cards and the statistical institution
that went along with this process, “investigative modalities,” which would help the PA in its
ruling endeavors.211 Despite the construction of ministries in PA governed areas Israel was the
one to issue identification cards. The Israelis merely added a border with the Palestinian flag
around the previously Israeli-issued ID which otherwise remained the same. Meanwhile, the
Palestinian passport could only be issued with a registered Israeli ID. Residents living outside
of Palestine received a Palestinian passport only if they have an Israeli ID. Thus while such
policies of issuing IDs along with birth and death registers and further statistic gathering
institutions now lay in the hands of the Palestinian PA they occurred in coordination with
Israel, in fact it was Israel that legitimized the process. In the Interim Agreement of 1995 the
209
Author’s blog entry, 20th February 2007.
Appadurai, 1996: 189.
211
Zureik, 2001: 208.
210
32
PA agreed to report all population number changes, and changes in places of residence to
Israel.212 This had been an improvement over Israel, the USA and Arab states opposition to a
Palestinian census with the aim of silencing the reality of the existence of a Palestinian nation
rather than “just a collection of people.”213 The Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS)
established following Oslo based its first “current status report” on 1967 Israeli census data.214
Though the PCBS would go on to conduct various ambitious censuses to counter Israeli
statistics, these were limited to the framework of a state-building process thus excluding
Palestinians that the Zionist colonizers prevented from returning or living in Palestine.215 A
new regime of movement developed under the auspices of the PA whereby corporatist
connections were required in order to receive permits for exit and entry permits from and into
the Gaza Strip. In the spirit of their Zionist colonizers PA officials rejected permits to whom
they deemed a threat to “national security,”- the deemed savage- as well as those- individuals,
families or factions- that were not to their liking.
Revolutionary forces rarely make strong candidates for governance, which Abu Ammar
revealed quickly. In February 1995 the PA head would set up “special state security courts”
independent of a judiciary system, that allowed secret evidence, entailed no appeal
procedures, and were judged by PLO military personnel appointed by the PA while verdicts
were prerogative of Arafat.216 A December 1996 Human Rights report claimed that torture
was widespread in PA prisons and that ten inmates had died while in custody of the one year
old PA, some of these due to torture.217 Repercussions for interrogators remained mere
rhetoric, recalling similar trends during trials of Israelis charged with crimes against
Palestinians. In other cases the PA simply did not execute their own court’s decisions,
withholding any justification in an uncanny repetition of their colonizer’s paradigm of a
judicial state of exception.218 The PA’s act of extra-judicially incarcerating opposition
activists and torturing them was an implementation of the occupier’s imaginary, their torture
practices mimicking the very ones Fateh members had undergone at the hands of the Israeli
administration.219 Gazan physician Iyad Al-Sarraj recalled overhearing an interrogation in a
PA prison carried out by a Palestinian officer in Hebrew.220 At Oslo the PA moreover agreed
to cooperate with Israeli security desires by transferring suspected resistance fighters to
Israel.221
Abu Ammar furthermore personally appointed associates close to him, many of who had
been pegged with corruption charges, a case in point was the appointment of Khaled Qudra as
high court judge after being ousted from his previous post due to fraud charges.222 The
confrontation between the PA and the opposition to Oslo came to a head on “Black Friday”
18th of November 1994 at the Palestine mosque when the PA forces killed 13 people during a
protest against arrests of PA opposition members. One of the new PA apparatuses was the
Preventative Security Forces (PSF)- a uniquely homogenous force made up primarily of local
hires- whose main mission was internal surveillance against opposition to the Oslo accord.223
Following the black Friday massacre one PSF member was recorded saying, “from now on
they should know that there is only one authority.”224 Implied here were families, clans or
212
Zureik, 2001: 217f.
Said, 1996: 17. Scott describes the process of naming as allowing a state project to identify its citizens in order
to “create a legible people” (Scott, 1998: 65).
214
Zureik, 2001: 210.
215
Zureik, 2001: 217.
216
Usher, 1996: 32.
217
PHRMG and B’tselem, 1996.
218
el-Zaeem, Sharhabeel, interview with author, 21 January 2008. Gaza City.
219
Abu Karim, 2008.
220
Parsons, 2004: 162.
221
Parsons, 2004: 164.
222
el-Sarraj, Dr Iyad, interview with author, 24 January 2008. Gaza City.
223
Parsons, 2004: 153.
224
Usher, 1996: 31.
213
33
opposition factions that traditionally had imposed their authorities over various spaces within
the Gaza Strip. Though the formation of the PSF was not agreed upon within the Declaration
of Principles signed at Oslo, Israel gave the PA free reign to set up the PSF in exchange for
the apparatus’s provision of information on Palestinian Islamists. In a speech on the 18th of
September 1994 Rabin would reveal to the Israeli cabinet that the PA security personnel
operated “with Israel’s knowledge, and in cooperation with Israel’s security forces to
safeguard Israel’s security interests.”225 In Oslo II Arafat went so far as to agree “to act
systematically against all expressions of [Palestinian] violence and terror.”226 This treaty,
confirmed at the 1998 Wye Memorandum Agreement, brought about the possibility for
Israel’s suspension of human rights in a desired eradication of ‘terror.” In line with such logic
the PA forces responded with ruthless suppression after a series of Hamas and Islamic Jihad
attacks across Israel in 1996.
In this process of legitimation, force is said to be a necessity, and thus rituals of force would
become commonplace.227 Hereby, the fetish of the PA’s commandement “overrides binaries
of resistance/passivity” and becomes everyday “common rituals” that ratify the
commandement, obeying no logic besides its own.228 Israeli-wanted Fateh activists would be
charged with the “special task” of “putting down any sign of opposition [to the DOP]... aimed
at creating proper respect for the new regime.”229 Through this cyclical process Israel
approved of deemed “wanted suspects” to legitimate the very regime that they had been the
legitimating partner in and would later make illegitimate at will.
In order to consolidate his rule Abu Ammar sought the loyalty of clan leaders across the
West Bank and Gaza, a tactic the Ottomans and British occupation had used prior to him. In
this way the PA paid their allegiance with personal favors sowing a deep-seated cronyism, the
effects of which are being reaped until today. In 1998 the head of the Preventative Security
Force Rasheed Abu Shbak created “firqat al-mot”- the death squad- made up of security force
members.230 In August 1995 B’tselem reported that individuals had reverted to individualistic
or clan-based (rather than political) solutions for their needs and aspirations. firqat al-mot
acted purely out of personal interests of those PA political leaders whom they were loyal to.
As members of firqat al-mot oversaw the main trade terminal between Israel and the Gaza
Strip Palestinian businesses had to either pay them off or else have their imports and exports
delayed and cancelled at will.231 The PSF furthermore would take on the multi-faceted role of
“combing terrorism, countering the opposition parties and gathering intelligence on Israel,”
while “monitoring imports and exports to and from the PA via economic monopolies” as well
as overseeing tax levies on select economic sectors.232 In this way much of the private sector
of the Gaza Strip came under the control of PA corporatism.
2.2.2. ECONOMY/AID: A Neo-liberal Lure
“[I]ntensive exploitation of a scarce resource served, at least at times, as the motor for
deepening inequalities, expansion and enhancement of state power.”
- Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony
The Paris Economic Protocol (PEP) signed on April 1994 between the PLO and Israel set the
general economic trade policy still applicable today: “‬Palestinian imports and exports are
granted equal treatment at the ‬Israeli ports of entry and exit except from security measures‭.”
The final clause is penned and implemented in the spirit of Oslo with the centrality of a legal
225
Usher, 1996: 27.
Massad, 2006: 103.
227
Sayer, 1994: 377.
228
Mbembe, 2001: 104; Trouillot, 1990: 169.
229
Usher, 1995: 66.
230
Ibrahim, interview with author, 29 November 2008. Cairo, Egypt.
231
Ibrahim, interview with author, 29 November 2008. Cairo, Egypt.
232
Parsons, 2004: 156f.
226
34
state of exception, whereby Israel is able to suspend the agreement at any moment due to
what it deems a “security concern.”233 By agreeing to such measures the PLO legitimized
Israel’s veto power on all economic trade, thus while Israel is the primary culprit in the
downward spiral of the Palestinian economic conditions, in Oslo the PA acceded to such
conditions with the hopes of a state, which entailed the aspirations to the attainment of
personal interests.234 The following description by a British colonial officer writing about
India in the early 20th century could just as well have been written in reference to the PA.
“[T]o give them private property would only bind them with stronger ties to our interests, and
make them our subjects.”235 The colonizers- whether in India or Palestine- sought the
hegemony of a liberal conception of property, which imposes the basis for their “order of
things.” Oslo thus cements Israel’s process of transforming Ottoman legal land categories
into state-tied categories of public and private land. Arafat sought a comprador bourgeoisie to
back Oslo, enabling export-imports, thus conclusively dooming the agricultural sector, which
had traditionally been the biggest Palestinian income generator.236
The agreement thereby had simply formalized the realities on the ground, “the status of the
Palestinian people as a cheap labor force for Ashkenazi Israel.”237 In line with the logic of
“private property” the Israeli colonizers gave the PA the mirage of a state and the tools for an
economic elite to partner in neoliberal profiteering. Hereby, the colonizer transitioned to a
form of neocolonialism whereby agents undertook the work of the colonizer with shared
profit. During the early post-Oslo years PA officials and their affiliates were able to maximize
their benefits under the agreement by forming partnerships with Israeli agents that would
expedite such “security measures” on behalf of their Palestinian business partners. One
example hereof was the PA owned Palestinian Commercial Service Company (PCSC), which
held majority shares in the 34 major Palestinian companies. In 1999, the company held assets
worth $345 mill or 8% of total GDP.238 The PA agreed through an Israeli envoy to a deal
between Israeli cement firm Nesher and the PA-controlled cement monopoly.239 It was
according to this logic that some PA officials dreamt of the Gaza Strip as the “Singapore of
the Middle East,” to be created with an excess of cheap exploitable labor and with the aid of a
myriad of international development deals awaiting their chance to capitalize on “peace” in
the Middle East. In the Oslo transition the PLO did not so much take on the ideology of
neoliberalism, but accepted the conditions asked of them in order to achieve the political
gains they sought.
In the Oslo Agreement the PLO very naively agreed to the establishment of among other
things, a “Palestinian Electricity Authority, a Gaza Sea Port Authority, a Palestinian
Development Bank, a Palestinian Export Promotion Board, a Palestinian Environmental
Authority, a Palestinian Land Authority and a Palestinian Water Administration Authority.”240
Yet, having already legitimized Israel’s control over land, sea and borders, the Oslo cosignatories jointly made all these Palestinian institutions obsolete. The flawed logic pointed to
the extent of the temptation of nation-statism, whereby the PLO agreed to a water authority
while Oslo entails a clause that Israel control all water and an export promotion board when
Israel retains all control of water, sea and borders to and from the Gaza Strip. Were these core
institutions of economic imaginary of nation-state required for better exploitation? What is
the purpose of such institutions without political sovereignty to control their own borders and
implement decrees? Meanwhile these many new ministries and agencies along with the
233
Agamben describes the paradox of sovereignty in being at the same time outside and inside the juridical order,
thus the “law is outside itself” (Agamben, 1998: 15).
234
Abed, 1999: 44ff.
235
Cited in Chakrabarty, 1992: 6.
236
Massad, 2006: 102.
237
Massad, 2006: 103.
238
Farsakh, 2000: 25.
239
Lagerquist, 2003: 14.
240
DOP: VII, 4.
35
security apparatuses turned the PA into an employment office, where 65,000 jobs were
created mostly in security and thereby becoming the largest employer of Palestinian labor.241
Such Oslo logic revealed the shortsighted nature of the PLO’s decision-making process, as
the desires of an economic elite continued to take precedence over any other considerations.
One of the most critical economic dimensions of Oslo was the withdrawal of Israeli forces
from within the territory of the Gaza Strip and Jericho. This move entailed two vital economic
consequences. One, it would buttress the Israeli narrative that the colonial-settler state would
thereby rescind legal responsibility for these districts. Furthermore, it would legalize a
reduced economic responsibility for Gaza and Jericho’s inhabitants while continuing to
maintain control over its borders. While Palestinian labor into Israel had increased by 64%
from 1972 through 1990, due to the shift in the Israeli economy, cheap unskilled labor was no
longer required in the amounts it had been during the pre-Oslo period.242 The amount of
laborers entering Israel fell from a high of 116,000 in 1992 to less than 36,000 in 1996 and
the numbers would continue to decrease.243 Despite the fact that the Israeli and Palestinian
economy had reached its highest level of inter-connectedness in 1993, the signing of Oslo
gave Israel the green light to begin the severing process. The PLO agreed to have their trade
limited by the fact that “Israeli import policy prohibits trade with several countries‭,‬ ‬mainly
those that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel‭,‬” whereby Israel tried to use the
Palestinian captive economy as a lure to build bi-lateral trade agreements with neighboring
Arab states.244 The limited success of such an endeavor cost the Palestinians severely. Since
1967 Israeli policies had significantly reduced and reconfigured Gaza’s external trade.
Following Oslo this policy came to a head as Gaza’s economy evolved into an autarky,
whereby Israel severed most opportunities for external trade causing Gaza’s economy to grow
increasingly isolated and turn exceedingly inward.245
Israel relied heavily on the Paris Protocol’s main clause of security whereby it consistently
justified closure of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Closure would bring movement of labor
and goods to a complete hold- aiding in the further severing of the two areas from each otherbringing about economic devastation following the Oslo accords. Between the years 1994 and
1999 Israel imposed 443 days of closure, totaling 90 days per year.246 In 1996 alone closure
caused losses of 39.6% of GNP in Gaza, while complete closure in March-April of that year
lead to 66% unemployment in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.247 One study estimated the
total damages incurred by closures between 1993-96 to total $2.8 billion, equaling double the
amount of aid disbursed in the area over that period.248 Reuters reported that the cost of
shipment of Coca-Cola’s sole Palestinian producer and distributor per kilometer from the
Israeli port of Ashdod to the economic border crossing into Gaza was greater than any of the
company’s trade routes in the world.249 A U.S.A. issued report stated, “there is currently no
possibility of Gaza exporters to move goods according to international standards.250”
The condition of labor is central within the Oslo Accords. On the one hand, many PLO
officials sought to jumpstart their desires of exploitation with the aid of investments, which
Oslo would make possible. On the other hand, the PA’s deemed autonomy aided Israel in
obscuring its legal responsibilities towards Palestinian labor.
At Oslo the PLO had ceded to a “regional economic cooperation” with Israel dominating
241
Roy, 1999: 70. See chapter 4.II.A: In line with neo-liberal requirements the PA creates a hire freeze and
reduces the number of employees.
242
Roy, 1999: 67.
243
Roy, 1999: 71.
244
DOP: I.
245
Roy, 1999: 68, 72.
246
Farsakh, 2000: 23.
247
Roy, 1999: 69.
248
Farsakh, 2000: 23.
249
Entous, 2007.
250
Cited in Roy, 1999: 72.
36
the “new Middle East.”251 The new opportunities available for a Palestinian business elite
caused the society to “vacillate between the values and ethics of the ‘new opportunism’ on the
one hand, and ‘traditional conservatism’ on the other252” The “false consciousness” of a “onedimensional Palestinian is to aim at creating artificial needs represented in consumerism” and
“is intended to guarantee the subordination and conformity of the Palestinians, especially
those with revolutionary ideas.”253 Husam Khader, a Fateh leader from the young guard said,
“Oslo culture destroyed our future” by creating an “economic party” within Fateh, “if they go
back to the struggle, their benefits will be destroyed.”254
The PLO’s nationalist path of “liberation,” reached a new apex in February of 2006. The
Fateh leadership responded to their democratic election loss by maintaining their domination
of security apparatuses, authority over which should have been transferred to their opponent
Hamas. Repeating their neglect of- centripetal- local collective political will and any
semblance of the democratic process, the PLO imposed their hegemonic control, which lead
to the accentuation of political, social and geographic divisions. Following their elite- and
party-driven transformation of the landscape of the Gaza Strip, the Fateh elite continued to
set their compass according to a foreign- centrifugal- directive imposing their vastly delegitimized political will on the masses. With Fateh’s stance of resistance long forgotten, the
proscribed notions of nation-statism entailed a searing division between the party’s elite and
all who opposed their relentless mimetic mode. The desire to appease “inter-national”
standards of legitimate nation-statism meant the neglect of the will of the very people they
said to represent. Meanwhile, the political and economic desires of the movement’s elite
largely coincided with those of its occupying power as well as their international backers the
Middle East Quartet- the USA, the UN, Europe and Russia. The PLO- once revolutionary,
resistant, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial- had made a complete about-face tempted by one sole
phantasm of the modernization story: a state.
III: THE GAZA “TAKEOVER”
“The most fertile soil for the reshaping of society are times of war, revolution…
and the struggle for liberation.”
- James Scott, Seeing Like a State
“It's a fight between the national project and this small kingdom they want to establish in
Gaza, the kingdom of Gaza, between those who are using assassination and killing to achieve
their goals, and those who are using the rules of law.”
- Abu Mazen 255
“We stopped saying we are Palestinians, we now ask what is your loyalty (iltima)…
is it for Fateh or Hamas?… since the death of Abu Ammar.”
- Nasir256
The morning of Monday June 18, 2007, a Hamas van pulls up to president Mahmoud Abbas’
house to make a total of eleven Hamas security men stationed there. A prayer rug lies on the
ground nearby, a Hamas flag inconspicuously lies on top of an awning, the guards greet each
other with traditional kisses usually exchanged between close friends. 30 minutes later the
building is deserted. An unimaginable sight in my two years here.
The presidential compound was not lit up for the first time in my memories over the past two
years. The Palestinian flag that used to fly over it has been taken down. The military training
251
Massad, 2006: 100.
Jarbawi, 2001.
253
Eid, 2008: 133.
254
Cited in White, 2009.
255
Haaretz and News Agencies, 21 June 2007.
256
Nasir, interview by author, 2 June 2007. Gaza City.
252
37
base nearby is deserted, the tents have disappeared, no vehicles are in sight. As I leave my
building things are being moved out, likely from a Fateh big wig that fled to West Bank and
now is moving his stuff there.257
In the months leading up to the Palestinian parliamentary elections in January 2006 the
USA’s pressure mounted on Israel not to hinder proceedings; after all this was planned to be a
great success in the USA’s drive to bring “democracy” to the Middle East.258 The USA
publicly announced its financial backing of Fateh, making official their support of Fateh as
their party of choice.259 The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research- funded by a
coalition of Western governments- conducted three crucial polls that affected perceptions in
Washington in the months of June, September and December 2005. They all showed Fateh
leading Hamas by a comfortable margin.260 Hamas’ victory in the elections revealed that the
“international community’s”261 true colors in the conflict was not “democracy” but a push for
their version of the order of things. Consequently, all aid was cut to the PA. In agreement
with Israel and almost every other government Fateh denied the practical implications of the
election outcome by never fully releasing its control over security forces, which ought to have
been ceded to the Hamas run Ministry of Interior. The mounting financial burden on Fateh
made it impossible for them to function.262 With its loss of the parliamentary elections Fateh
lost most international funding support despite its stance in opposition to the election results
and its recognition internationally as Israel’s elect “negotiation partner.”
During this period the EU set up the “Temporary International Mechanism” whereby
donations by-passed the now Hamas operated PA Ministry of Finance and were funneled
through “the president’s office” which proceeded to distribute partial and sporadic paychecks
to PA employees in both Gaza and the West Bank.263 Following Hamas’ victory, Israel
rejected entry of all day-laborers working in Israel- prior to the second Intifada their numbers
had reached over 200,000- further throwing Gaza into economic stagnation. In the eyes of the
Palestinian street Abbas’ ability to provide any alternative to Hamas’ proposed stance of
resistance became less viable than ever, significantly decreasing his support. Simultaneously,
Hamas’ popularity waned among some sections of Palestinian society as economic pressure
mounted. These events caused the division initiated by the establishment of the Oslo pseudostate to be brought to a head.264
In February of 2007 a covert plan to provide Fateh an economic boost was leaked in the elmajd newspaper in Jordan- its headquarters were consequently shut down.265 The document
proposed economic backing of Fateh in preparation of hoped-for early elections. It read,
“Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas should propose, in consultation with the World Bank
and the European Union, a plan that defines specific sectors and projects that are in need of
financing, and that will show useful and tangible results on the ground in the space of six to
257
Author’s field notes, 18 June 2009.
Lieven, July 23, 2006.
259
Abo Toameh, January 22, 2006. This act has been asserted by some to have been a strategy of undermining
Fateh, building on the common knowledge of the USA’s unpopularity on the Palestinian street. “The US
government, however, is keeping a comparatively low profile in the $2 million initiative headed by the Agency for
International Development. No official government logos appear during projects and events.”
260
Crooke, 28 June 2007.
261
“the international community is imagined as being composed of the aggregate of particular nations, but is also
posited at the same time as the source of “universal” values on which international institutions draw to justify their
characterization of these particular values as universal. Thus there is a circular relation of ation and international
community in which each reinforces the Other’s claim to universality” (Pahuja, 2005: 465).
262
Since Oslo PA salaries are almost entirely funded by donor governments.
263
Not unlike cases described by Duffiled in Africa the EU used such measures to create a perceived “structural
stability” thus changing the perceived political balance of power (Duffield. 2001: 103). See Duffield regarding
donors influencing political structures via aid (2001: 87, 92).
264
“The existence of a Palestinian government created a divide. Abu Ammar created a mushawih/ phony version
of a nation. What was tragic is that many hoped for the return of the Israeli occupation.” Iyad Al-Saaraj, Interview
by author, Gaza City, January 24, 2008.
265
Missing Links. 2 May 2007.
258
38
nine months, centering on the alleviation of poverty and unemployment. And since some
projects will take more than nine months, there should be a guarantee of adequate results
within the nine months. This is so as to guarantee the usefulness of these projects before the
elections.”266 Soon thereafter the US congress passed a $42 million aid package to boost
Fateh’s security apparatus in the Gaza Strip.267 Much of the international community reacted
disdainfully towards efforts of negotiations between Hamas and Fateh and the formation of a
unity government. The US pushed its backed strongman, Muhammed Dahlan- referred to
endearingly as Abu Fadi by his supporters- to undermine an agreement struck in Mecca early
2007.268 In a leaked report UN rapporteur Alvaro de Soto said, “The US clearly pushed for a
confrontation between Fateh and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca the US
envoy declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,”
referring to the near civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being
regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting
Hamas.”’269 Egypt provided Fateh’s security forces permits to cross the Rafah border to
travel abroad for military training, while Hamas seized multiple arms shipments intended for
Fateh forces.270 The man within Fateh on the receiving end of US support was Muhammed
Dahlan- personified by some as the Palestinian Pinochet- who collaborated with the CIA to
undermine Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip.271 In the months leading up to Hamas taking
military control of Gaza, Abu Fadi’s men, provided with American weapons, sought to
undermine Hamas’ rule in Gaza by kidnapping and torturing Hamas members thereby
destabilizing neighborhoods. This outside military support did not stop some Fateh officials
from selling the weapons on the black market for personal gain.272
On Monday June 12th I drove back into the Gaza Strip like I had so many times before but
this time it was different, something was in the air. Eid informed me that Hamas had set up
major roadblocks all across the strip and were searching for Fateh activists. Throughout the
20 minute drive Eid looked around nervously, taking shortcuts wherever he knew how to stay
off of the main streets while desperately trying to remove a sticker of Yasir Arafat on his
dashboard. His son Hussein had put it there recently, after Eid had purged the car and his
house from any remnants of his deep-seated Fateh allegiance. Even the car we drove in had
been provided by the Fateh leadership. Intermittently between explaining the most recent
events and keeping a close eye out for any manned roadblocks Eid’s right hand would return
to the dashboard to pick away just enough little pieces of sticker so that “alrayis’s” image
would not be identifiable to a gun-clad Hamas member at a roadblock. Hamas had already
shot many drivers and passengers in the knees due to their allegiance to Fateh.
On the 11th of June 2007 Hamas forces killed Baha’ Abu Jarad, a close accomplice of
Muhammed Dahlan’s in the Northern Gaza Strip. From there Hamas’ military wing the elQassam brigades took over police stations and headquarters of the Preventative Security
Forces (PSF) headed by Rasheed Abu-Shbak, a Dahlan supporter. Over the course of the next
three days Hamas’ military apparatus took control of police, secret police and PSF military
installations across Northern Gaza and in Rafah and Khan Younis in the South. On Hamasrun radio stations one neighborhood after another was reported “liberated” from the corrupt
PA forces.
My neighbor Ayman, a Hamas supporter, was kidnapped by Sameeh- a Fateh militant- one
week before the latter was executed. Ayman was beaten and taken to the beach to be shot. His
266
Missing Links. 29 June 2007.
Reuters, “U.S. begins $42 million program to bolster Hamas opponents,” Haaretz, October 14, 2006. Haaretz,
Congress okays $59m in U.S. funds for Abbas' security forces, 10. April 2007.
268
Ibrahim, Interview by author, November 29, 2008. Cairo.
269
De Soto, Alvaro. 2007.
270
Ibrahim, Interview by author, November 29, 2008. Cairo. AP, “Carter: Stop favoring Fateh over Hamas,”
Jerusalem Post, Jun. 19, 2007.
271
Tony Karon, May 16, 2007.
272
Ibrahim, Interview by author, November 29, 2008. Cairo.
267
39
oldest brother, himself a Fateh activist, saved his life by calling the perpetrators and pleading
for his younger brother’s life, many others were not as fortunate.
Although the final Fatah stronghold was still standing by the evening Hamas fighters were
already making the rounds in the streets, three and four jeeps at a time, loaded with armed
men wearing all black, their faces covered with masks, holding their guns in the air, a few,
rather uncomfortably, waving to the people. On el-Aqsa, the only remaining radio station
being aired from Gaza belonging to Hamas, these areas are being called “freed” from the
traitors.
A former Fatah spokesman, now speaking on behalf of Hamas, was heard on the air
denouncing his former leaders, calling them spies of the USA and traitors.
A further shock came around 8pm when Abu Mazen announced Gaza a renegade entity and
declared his presidency over the West Bank. Gazans reacted with a mixture of disgust and
betrayal.
On June 14th Hamas took control of the National Security compound el-Saraya and the
central PSF headquarters in Gaza City. Fateh leadership had been strangely absent from Gaza
as the fighting began that week, and as soldiers watched their officers abandoning their posts
during the course of the Hamas onslaught they barely fought back. On June 14th an Egyptian
ship appeared near the presidential compound in Gaza City taking aboard fleeing Fateh
leaders. By early Friday morning all Fateh resistance had been broken. Other than for all PA
forces to stand their ground and to try and avoid a bloodbath, no orders whatsoever had come
from Fateh central command in Ramallah.
As we are talking Eid gets a phone call that his neighbor’s house is burning. “We stopped
being one people, there is a people of Fattah and a people of Hamas,” (battal shaeb wahid,
shaeb Fateh wa shaeb hamas). Hamas has begun going door to door searching for weapons,
at times kidnapping Fateh activists, while talks between the two parties in Egypt have fallen
apart again. Over the phone Eid’s daughter informs him that Hamas has burned Sameeh elMadhoun’s home down in which Eid replies, “no problem Sameeh has burned down a house
here too” referencing a building near my home that Eid and I had watched burn earlier that
day.273
Fateh labeled the events a “coup,” the press quickly labeled the Gaza Strip “Hamastan”
echoing Israeli government statements.274 The Middle East Quartet also intervened pressing
president Abbas not to yield to Hamas and to hang onto power in the West Bank, promising
to support him if he did so.275 Mahmoud Abbas immediately fired Prime Minister Ismael
Haniyeh, disbanding the government cabinet and setting up an emergency government in the
West Bank town of Ramallah. Hamas for its part explained its forceful position as being a
mere reaction to a planned Fateh military coup lead by Muhammed Dahlan and his loyal
supporters within Fateh. In a lecture four days after Hamas took power in Gaza former US
president Jimmy Carter echoed Hamas’ remarks stating the role of the USA, EU and Israel in
subverting the outcome of Hamas’ election victory and militarily helping Abbas remain in
power as “criminal.”276 Subsequently, Hamas obtained hundreds of secret documents from
Fateh’s secret police headquarters in Northern Gaza revealing Fateh’s complicity in receiving
foreign military training and aid confirming previous suspicions.
Days after the power redistribution in an interview with Reuters, Dahlan contended that
Hamas had fallen into a “trap,” adding to the suspicion that Hamas’ military actions had been
hoped for.277 The reports from Fateh soldiers in Gaza legitimated the theory. “There was total
frustration and disappointment,” said an Abbas security officer who was one of the last to
273
Author’s field notes, 12 June 2007.
Crooke, 2007.
275
Ibid. Abbas’ hands remained tied until the “emergency government” formed. Israel and the Quartet retained the
authority to determine when Fateh would be considered “real power” vs. “shadow power” (Bayart et al, 1997: 23).
276
Associated Press. June 19, 2007.
277
Reuters, 17 June 2007.
274
40
desert the presidential compound in Gaza City.278 Hamas military commander Abu Obeida
stated, “I expected it to take one month. That is what we planned for and trained for. But then
at the beginning, all the Fateh commanders escaped their compounds in ambulances and left
for Egypt. They left their men to die.”279 Referring to Israel’s complicity in the incident,
former Islamic Jihad leader Sayed Baraka said, “on the day of the coup one single apache
could have stopped the events. Israel allowed Hamas to take control of PA police stations
without firing on them as they did to the PA in the past.”280 In an interview with Aljazeera,
Hani al-Hassan, a member of Fateh’s Central Command identified Dahlan as the "main
culprit" behind the Gaza crisis. Accusing Dahlan of influencing Abbas’ to “foil any
reconciliation bid between Fateh and Hamas after the Islamic movement came to power in
January 2006.”281 The following day Abbas fired Al-Hassan from his post as presidential
advisor.282
Over his TV in the living room Eid used to have a postcard of Sameeh hanging, right next to
his deceased grandmother whom he can no longer visit in the cemetery since it is too close to
the border area where Israel will shoot at anyone approaching. After Eid returned home
following these terrible days in the North of Gaza he informed me he burned every paper and
ID he had of Fateh. Only the Kalashnikov remains hidden. His eldest son Hussein hangs
photocopied poster of “martyred” Sameeh Al-Madhoun on the wall, not much earlier his
teacher had torn a necklace, baring a picture of Sameeh, from around his neck.
Shortly after dinner is served Eid receives a call and we changed the channel from Rotana
Cinema (a very popular music channel in many non-religious homes in Gaza) to el-Hurra (an
Arabic news channel USA funded by the USA) to catch an interview with Abu Fadi. Daher
says just one word when Jamal switches to it, “khalas,” to which Eid explodes, “who else are
we going to listen to, are we going to listen to you?” Everyone is quiet and glued to the
screen, especially Eid.283
For its part Israel- ever seeking to maximize its legitimacy- considered the inter-fighting
reason not to negotiate with the Palestinians;284 only after the West Bank emergency
government was formed Israel reversed its stance. Israel furthermore increased its siege on
Gaza to banning of all exports and reducing even further the types of imports to what Israel
deemed as “essential” items.285 In the West Bank Mahmoud Abbas appointed Salam Fayyad
as the new Prime Minister of the PA- Fayyad’s party, the Third Way, had received 3% of the
278
Nissenbaum, 20 June 2007.
The Observer, 24 June 2007.
280
Sayed Baraka, Interview by author, Khan Younis, 12 July 2008.
281
Abo Toameh, June 28, 2007.
282
The incident parallels Teresa Caldeira’s description of the absurd argumentation defending police in case of
prison massacre (2000, 178). There is little space for the state to err. The fear of self-critique is moved by a
“language of legitimization”/ “doxic submission” to occupiers imagining of legitimacy (Bourdieu, 1998: 38).
283
Author’s field notes, 12 June 2007.
284
Caldeira, 2000: 178; 199. Divide and conquer in Saudi by race, in Sao Paulo by class, in Gaza by political
affiliation: Governmentability. Jonathan Hill argues that in the “failed state” literature such a “condition” is
considered an internal/ domestic problem by identifying such a “failed state” with a sick body that needs curing.
Such analysis furthermore points to the benevolent restorative stance of the “international community;” the entire
process is a red herring distracting from the systemic role of external players in bringing about internal
fragmentation (2005: 149). Israel’s role in the formation of a militant Hamas as alternative to the more active and
dominant nationalist discourse of Fateh in the 80s is well documented (see Hroub, 2002; Milton-Edwards, 1992;
el-Zaeem, Sharhabeel, Interview with author, January 21, 2008). The role of the Israel, the USA, Egypt and Jordan
in backing Fateh- as the sudden Palestinian dove and elect partner for negotiations- in opposition to Hamas. Rajan
addresses the episode of “scandal”/ the abnormal referring to the intention of keeping the attention off the day to
day hostilities thus distracting from the role of the state- in this case, Israel- of perpetuating the occurrence of civil
war (Gramsci in Rajan, 2003: 232 n.33).
285
BBC, 25 May 2009.
279
41
vote in parliamentary elections in 2006.286 The new Prime Minister was also a former senior
member of the World Bank and an established member of the inter-national aid regime.287
On the 18th of June the New York Times reported, “The United States on Monday ended an
economic and political embargo of the Palestinian Authority in a bid to bolster President
Mahmoud Abbas and the new Fateh-led emergency government he has established in the
West Bank as a counterweight to Hamas-controlled Gaza.”288 The fact that according to
Palestinian legislation the emergency cabinet’s legality expired after 30 days since it did not
receive PLC legitimation did not concern political actors, least of all the democracy pushing
USA and its affiliated institutions.289 Consequently, not only was withheld aid immediately
reinstated, but also a percentage of past PA wages were incrementally and partially repaid.
Even in Gaza this back pay was applied and the payroll re-installed under the condition that
PA employees not work in the now Hamas controlled ministries and public enterpriseswhether as school teachers, nurses, police officers or higher officials. Furthermore, all PA
employees suspected of affiliation with Hamas had their pay cut.290 Towards determining true
affiliation Fateh designated employment agents that reported on Fateh members who
switched allegiances who had their pay immediately halted. This situation, still ongoing, has
created deep divisions within Palestinian society including within families with divided
political affinities. In his June 2007 speech Carter went on to accuse American-EuropeanIsraeli consensus for reinstating direct aid to the West Bank emergency government, while
denying the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip this privilege as an "effort to divide Palestinians
into two peoples."291
Israel furthermore returned illegally withheld PA tax monies while development projects
were implemented to boost the West Bank economy. el-Quds el-Arabi reported citing
Palestinian NGO members, that USAID had requested large-scale project proposals for
financing accelerated projects within hours after the appointment of Dr Salam Fayad to form
an emergency government. These projects had to be capable of “showing quick results in the
life of people in the West Bank and that they involve large numbers of Palestinian workers.”
292
The projects furthermore were meant to make apparent that large-scale American funding
for improvements in the life of the people of the West Bank had been made available. These
sources verified that not one dollar was to reach the Gaza Strip; aid directly played into the
hands of political divisions.293 The New York Times went on to report on June 18th,
“[o]fficially, Bush administration officials insisted they would not write off Gaza, and Ms.
Rice said the United States would give $40 million to the United Nations to finance relief
projects there… ‘We will not leave one and a half million Palestinians at the mercy of
terrorist organizations’” Ms. Rice said.294 The head of the American Task Force on Palestine
286
“Abbas on several occasions suggested that he had no choice but to retain Fayyad as prime minister since
dismissing him wouldn't bode well with Western powers that pay the salaries of tens of thousands of PA civil
servants and security personnel and generally keep the PA financially afloat” (Amayreh, 21- 27 May 2009.).
287
Duffield points to the use of aid for the sake of “structural stability” and “to help change the balance of power
and authority and between groups and to restructure societies in such a way so as to prevent future conflict
(Duffield, 2001: 103). In this case the conflict that is to be prevented is between Israelis and Palestinians, not
within Palestinian society.
288
New York Times, 18 June 2007.
289
Brown, 2007b: 3.
290
Kafarna, Ayman. Interview with author. Beit Hanoun, January 9, 2008. This process of differentiation between
Fateh and Hamas members subverts conceptions of citizenship by disregarding the rights of some (Caldeira, 2000:
2).
291
Associated Press, Jun. 19, 2007.
292
Missing Links. 29 June 2007.
293
Missing Links. 29 June 2007.
294
New York Times, June 18, 2007. In the liberal peace paradigm the poor are identified as legitimate agents of
resisting against the system of inequality. Here Rice refers to the divisive rule of Hamas (the “terrorists”) whom
the benevolent USA will not abandon. The USA’s administration creates legitimate agents out of the poor
rebelling against the injustice of Hamas in their search for “stability,” completely ignoring the systemic violence it
itself carries out (Duffield, 2001: 127). See n.184: Hill 2005: 149.
42
Ziad Asali, referring to the re-instated aid said, “[t]his is as serious as it gets… [i]t is time to
lift the siege off the Palestinian people. This is the time to open up the political and economic
horizons, and wage a campaign for the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people.” On its
website the organization describes itself as a “non-partisan organization based in Washington,
DC,” that is “dedicated to advocating that it is in the American national interest to promote an
end to the conflict in the Middle East through a negotiated agreement that provides for two
states - Israel and Palestine - living side by side in peace and security.”295 One of the Task
Force’s founders is Ghaith Al-Omari, who according to the website is “a former foreign
policy advisor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”296
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, for his part accused the international community of
hypocrisy saying, “this confirms the falseness of the international community’s support for
democracy.”297 The USA-EU-Israel nexus are utilizing the administration of aid as an
opportunity to reform “collective identity and social organization” towards their version of
social stability.298 The stability they refer to includes an economic dimension. Journalist
Arthur Nelson identifies the strings attached to the aid economy as the duo of market
liberalization and a “crushing of the Intifada’s resistance dynamics.”299 Nelson further points
to the PA’s Negotiations Support Unit, the main body engaging in “negotiations” between
Fateh’s PA and Israel receives funding from the Adam Smith Institute.300 The implementer of
such policies is the new emergency cabinet made up of so-called “technocrats” who are hailed
as neutral bodies, beyond the deep political divide ailing the Palestinian community. Joseph
Massad traces the term “technocrat” back to Chilean reforms under Pinochet designed by
“Chicago school” technocratic economists. This model is now being presented to Palestinians
as a neutral way out of their political impasse.301 Following the events of June of 2007,
Palestinians ended up with two governments, neither of which recognized the other. The
technocrat cabinet in the West Bank went on to close NGOs not registered in Ramallah,
which one ministry director justified as required action in order to “build a state.”302 Hamasaffiliated NGOs in the West Bank thus effectively became illegal.303 Mirroring these policy
trends and economic underpinnings is none other than right-wing Likud party’s prime
minister, Benjamin Netenyahu. In a recent speech addressing his recommended political
strategy he brushed aside dealing with Palestinian demands for a state, Jerusalem and the
return of refugees on behalf of focusing on an economic plan for Gaza and the West Bank in
order to deter Palestinians from terrorism.304
At 8:30pm on June 14th reports begin circulating that Sameeh el-Madhoun tried to escape
from the building he was seeking refuge in. Reports said that he had taken a car from a driver
on the road and headed South, supposedly to the border with Egypt. Meeting a checkpoint
along the way el-Madhoun and his guards killed a Hamas member after which they were
hunted down. Reports say that he was taken to Nussairat camp and shot by the mother of his
final Hamas victim. Abu Karim who lives just a few houses from the slain Hamas man’s
house said later that the woman who had shot Sameeh was “irhabeya (a terrorist), if he killed
someone he should be tried.”305 El-Madhoun, nicknamed “el-Maleoun” (the cursed one) by
many Hamas supporters became a symbol following his death, becoming the image and the
name connected with the Dahlan-lead coup plotters.
295
The American Taskforce on Palestine, 2008.
The American Taskforce on Palestine, 2008.
297
New York Times, 18 June 2007.
298
Duffield, 2001: 123.
299
Nelson, 26 February 2008.
300
Nelson, 26 February 2008.
301
Massad, 2007.
302
Conflicts Forum. 8 October 2007.
303
Massad, 2007.
304
Jerusalem Post, November 19, 2008.
305
Abu Karim, interview with author, 17 June 2007. Gaza City.
296
43
Figure 7: “The leader of the collaborating wing of Fateh;” “retribution is inevitable.”
This image, developed by Hamas (recalling the American deck of cards of their most
wanted Iraqis), paints a vivid picture of the deep seeded divisions in Palestinian society. The
image of the deck is created after el-Madhoun’s death and thus the Ace-bearing his portrait- is
crossed out. Two weeks later I am shocked to see a five story building size poster of Sameeh
covering the central square in in Ramallah. el-Madhoun had become a national figure of
resistance to Hamas and of divisions between Palestinians. For months weddings in the Gaza
Strip would end in bloodshed if a song was heard celebrating the late Fateh fighter. The song
put to a fast pace wedding dance tune includes the words, “Yasir, your waves are roaring,
your blood is priceless; an earthquake is backing you, he is called him Sameeh el-Madhoun.”
One night, my host’s nephew asks me if I will name my first child Sameeh. el-Madhoun
became a symbol for many Fateh members who had their pride broken by the successful
routing of Fateh. Yet, the Fateh fighter is also representative of another trend, the “blurring of
civil and international war.”306 Another title given to Dahlan and his supporters is jamaet
Dayton- Dayton’s possee- referring to the American Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton who heads a USsponsored "security coordination" program for the Ramallah-based PA. “The Dayton agenda
aims to transform Palestinian Security Forces into an "enabler" of the two-state solution and
provide the PA leader with the capacity to contain any resistance to any "strategic" political
decisions he makes.”307 The US-backed “Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency” includes
the requirement of Fateh reforms that entail the get Dahlan- whom former US president Bush
called “our guy”- and his supporters into higher positions of influence.
Dahlan and the “takeover” of Gaza in June 2007 are a crystallization of a trend that began
with the slow transition of Fateh in the late 60s and with Oslo as a central marker. The PLO
has transformed itself from a regional symbol of resistance to leading the opposition against
its greatest internal political contestant. The PLO and particularly Fateh altered their raison
d’être from a militant struggle against colonial powers to complete alignment with economic
strategies of colonial interests.
306
307
Appadurai, 1996: 46.
Herzallah, Mohamed. 2 July 2009.
44
Chapter 3:
HAMAS: PALESTINIANIZING ISLAM: Counter-Ordering of Time and Space
“Nations… lose their origins in the myths of time
and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye.”
- Homi Bhaba, The Location of Culture
“Since the Hamas election win, Palestinian has no meaning.”
- Abu Shady, Gaza City, June 2, 2007
“Rahat biladna,” (our country has gone) Yusra said to me upon driving through the streets of
Gaza City and seeing the military headquarters “al-Saraya,” a prison and various
intersections free of PA forces. It was on June 17th 2007 days after Hamas had taken control
of the Gaza Strip by force after Fateh security heads had not handed over power to the new
Hamas cabinet.
The battle for the Gaza Strip as a “countr[y] of words” is accentuated and complicated by
the increasing popularity of Hamas as a nationalist alternative.308 The Islamic Resistance
movement (Hamas) grew out of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood whose
popularity was based largely on its charity and educational agenda. Meanwhile, the Islamic
movement increasingly transfigured into a political force deriving much of its legitimacy
from regional socio-political changes and Hamas’ inauguration during the Intifada in 1987.
Regional influences include the Islamic revolution in Iran, the decline of Nasir’s influence on
Arab nationalism following the 1967 war, and the waning influence of left-leaning centers of
power beyond Palestine. As its popularity and influence grow Hamas reveal increasing
tendencies of nationalism thus adding another layer of narrative discursivity to the “Gaza
Strip” as a fabricated spatial entity. By framing the liberation of Palestine as a priority en
route to the liberation of the entire Islamic umma, Hamas reveals its ideology as merely a
different species of the genus of nationalism shared with the likes of its rival Fateh.309
Hamas’ narrative provides a “mythico-history” that reconstitutes a “moral order of the
world,”310 by presenting itself as a project in opposition to the occupying force in an attempt
to gather an oppressed people under the unifying banner of nationalism- though with a
religious coloring- in opposition to the nationalism of the PLO.
It is important to revisit Hamas’ image as terrorist and violent. I will claim that through
closer assessment it becomes clear that the movement has a certain political trajectory
denying the claim that the movement’s raison d’être is violent or purely religious- religion
being portrayed as the source of its terrorism. Rather, Hamas engage in a war of position,
which much like Fateh and the Israeli administration, utilize violence- as well as social
welfare, education etc.- at varying levels in order to pursue political objectives. If Walter
Benjamin is correct in his assessment that “history is made up of images,” then it is precisely
the image of Hamas- its operatives with gun and covered face much like Fateh before it- that
taints it as illegitimately violent and thus terrorist with the ostensible tie to its religious nature.
I want to claim that political pragmatism, more than alignment with shifting regional political,
was the determining factor for the Islamist movement’s political decision-making process.
The ensuing contest between Palestinian players is accentuated by the vacuum of the
existence of a Palestinian state and takes place at various levels including social welfare,
education, politics and military activity. Terminologies of secular/religious, terrorist/nonterrorist, legitimate/illegitimate and democratic/non-democratic are key tropes utilized to
mark the war of position both by the contenders and its external interest parties before an
internal and an external legitimizing audience.
308
Bowman, 1994: 3
Juergensmeyer, 1993: 30.
310
Malkki, 1995: 55.
309
45
By breaking with the movement’s religious heritage the Islamic Resistance Movement
enters the same trend of thought that had transformed the PLO into an anachronistic shell of
the resistance movement it once was by engaging in a “mimetic mode” of its occupier.311
Much like the PLO before it- and third world liberation movements elsewhere- Hamas aides
the trend of a universalization of discursive nationalism in part “by their collaborative venture
and violence.”312 The battle for legitimacy between Hamas and its main political rival Fateh,
reaches unprecedented levels precisely because the bedrock of sought after nation-state
legitimacy- including within its rubric the vital element of territorial sovereignty- is never
achieved. This dynamic perpetually accentuates competition over control of “spatial
representations,” and internal political domination. This battle for legitimacy in a milieu of
statelessness stands as the biggest achievement of Israeli policies’ biggest success, namely:
divide and conquer.
In this chapter I will once again be addressing matters of time and space, this time Hamas’
role in reshaping the landscape of the Gaza Strip. I will examine the resistance movement’s
emergence from a focus on charity and educational programs to military resistance and
eventually to a political establishment- though not recognized by most global political
players. I want to claim that the movement changes its approach to governance, rather than
merely amending its political trajectory. Much like it did for Fateh before it, I will posit that
Hamas aligns its methods of governance with the status quo, the familiar imaginary for how a
group is meant to govern. In my assessment of Hamas’ nationalization process I will draw on
Khaled Hroub, Milton-Edwards, Lybarger and Baumgarten. In depicting Hamas’ struggle for
legitimacy vis-à-vis the PLO I will engage Antonio Gramsci’s formulation of counterhegemony. I will use Mark Duffield, Fanon and Arendt in assessing the role of violence in the
portrayal of Hamas and the ongoing contested process of its legitimization and delegitimization centrifugally and centripetally. This latter distinction builds on Trouillot’s
examination of the processes political actors engage in searching for legitimacy among a local
constituency versus external political forces.313 Throughout my analysis I will draw upon
participant-observation during the time I lived in the Gaza Strip as well as interviews with
Hamas members and their critics. Finally, I will highlight Hamas’ transformation of the
spatial landscape of Palestine in relation to force (police, prison, security, courts) and
economy (tunnel trade, borders, economic controls).
3.1. COUNTER-HEGEMONY: Building Hamas
“Israel gave Hamas a cup of tea, now they want it back.”
- Abu Shady, Gaza City, June 2, 2007
Unlike many of its rival factions Hamas can claim to be an indigenous party that was founded
inside Palestine.314 Formed in January of 1988, the movement’s roots go back to the early
1930s when Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan el-Banna sent his brother Abdel-Rahman to
Palestine to spread the movement’s teachings.315 In its early phases the Palestinian branch of
the Muslim Brotherhood would rise to a place of prominence in the opposition to the
311
Chakrabarty, 1992; Bhabha, 1987: 317-26.
Chakrabarty, 1992: 20.
313
Trouillot, 2003: 22. These twin concepts express the division between a desire to join a global regime of neoliberal markets which leads to a centrifugal economic dependency on external bodies due to its existence on the
periphery of the capitalist world. A centripetal dynamic conveys a stance that is “inherently inward-looking to
exercise primary control and derive their momentum from dynamics of coercion and consent within that space.”
314
A debate exists between those that believe Hamas played a more central role in causing rise to the Intifada
(Khaled Hroub, 2002: 36ff.; Abu Amr, 1993: 10f.; Beverly Milton-Edwards, 1996). While Abu Amr, Hass and
other locally based authors claim, Hroub and Milton-Edwards place a larger emphasis on he central role of
Islamists in the Intifada. While they argue that the Intifada brought about the creation of Hamas, the new
movement actually jumpstarted the Intifada. Milton-Edwards emphasized the significance of Jihad el-Islami.
315
Abu Amr, 1993: 6.
312
46
occupying Israeli forces.316 While developing the more traditional stance of the Egyptian
Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank with an emphasis on teaching and preaching, in Gaza
the Brotherhood participated and lead many of the clashes with the Israeli army. Two groups,
the Youth of Vengeance and the Battalions of Justice, were principle actors in this effort.317
Soon thereafter the Muslim Brotherhood, who had initially cooperated with the Egyptian
revolution leaders, experienced increasing tension in their relationship with president Gamal
Abdel-Nasir and after 1952 were forced to go underground. This dynamic was paralleled in
the newly formed Gaza Strip, which had come under Egypt’s tutelage after 1948, causing
significant cutbacks to the movement’s military activity. The militant movements that had
formed under the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership were disbanded, while many of their
members would soon join the nationalist Fateh, whose leaders had gained inspiration from
the Brotherhood’s early militant groups.318 Only in the late eighties did the Palestinian
Brotherhood emerge again to play a central role in opposing occupation. Despite its
Brotherhood roots, Fateh evolved with a strategy to have “no visible Islamic coloration” in
order to adapt to the dominant political milieu of the time.319 Nasir’s regime tolerated no
religious political action. For Brotherhood members disgruntled with their leadership’s
inactivity, Fateh provided a viable exit from the impasse the Egyptian leader imposed.
While Fateh took center stage in the PLO and in the Palestinian political scene in the mid
60s, the Brotherhood would eventually emerge again, at first quietly in the “mosque building”
phase starting with the momentum gained by Nasir’s defeat in 1967 until 1975- between 1967
and 1987 Gaza’s mosques increased from 200 to 600.320 During this time the movement
embodied principles inspired by its mother organization in Egypt, preaching and teaching as
well as concentrating on charitable work especially among Gaza’s expansive refugee
population. In the following stage from 1975 through the late eighties, the Brotherhood
emphasized the building of social institutions consistent with their desire to change society
from the bottom-up.321 In 1973 the group formed the Mujamae el-Islami as a charitable
organization, which simultaneously provided the facade of its mounting political aspirations
whereby it contested the PLO’s hegemony.322
Starting in 1978 the Mujamae’s political maneuverings explicitly pitted the Islamists against
the PLO. The Gaza Strip’s first university represented one site of contestation between the
two factions. In the early 80s PLO head Yasir Arafat demanded the resignation of the
university’s president, Sheikh Awwad- backed by the Islamists- and the university’s board to
be placed under control of civil society leaders in Gaza. The day the announcement was to be
made el-Mujamae el-Islami organized a rally in Gaza City in support of Awwad. The
resignation was deterred and the rally, in clear sight- or oversight according to some
eyewitnesses- of Israeli security torched the Palestinian Red Crescent society, one of the civil
society organizations that Arafat had intended to join the board of the university. While the
Israeli administration did not directly cede control of the university to the Mujamae, they did
“make sure there was always competition present between the PLO and the Islamists, this was
their goal,” explained Dr Ghazi Eouda, a founding member and former professor of the
Islamic University. In a further incident at the university Dr Eouda recalls seeing Abu Sabry
Shalom, a well known Israeli officer passing out sticks to Fateh and Islamist students
gathering for a fight in order to perpetuate the conflict.323 In February 1981 the Mujmae and
Israeli administration’s plans again overlapped. Following a request from the Islamist
leadership the Israeli administration called on seven of the thirteen university council
316
Hroub, 2002: 24.
Hroub, 2002: 24.
318
Hroub, 2002: 24.
319
In a July 1957 memorandum from Khalil Al-Wazir (cited in Hroub, 2002: 24).
320
Abu Amr, 1993: 8.
321
Abu Amr, 1993: 30.
322
Abu Amr, 1993: 7.
323
Eouda, Dr Ghazi, interview with author, 17 July 2007.
317
47
members- all of them non-Islamists- to resign. With complaints falling on deaf ears, the
Mujamae had once again successfully spread their web of counter-hegemony.324 Education in
general was a field of power that the Mujamae invested in heavily.325 By the Oslo period 65%
of secondary education had been standardized under the Islamists’ guidance, with the seal of
approval by the PA’s Ministry of Education revealing the group’s successful infiltration of
PA ranks.326
Dr Iyad el-Sarraj, a mental health physician and a political independent leader in Gaza was
told by his uncle Najjar that the Israeli military ruler of Gaza had told him in early 1987, “we
support the Islamists because the PLO is becoming a pain for us.” Upon being warned of the
danger in such a strategy the military ruler reportedly boasted, “we can handle them.”327 The
Israeli administration aimed at strengthening a conservative Islamist alternative to the PLO’s
popular program for national liberation in a classic colonial “divide-and-rule strategy.”328
Israel’s shared contempt with the Islamic block for the PLO lead to its exploitation of the
existent political divisions in the form of the provision of permits to the Islamic group, which
PLO factions were denied funding of mosques thus supporting the movement’s counterhegemony to the existent secular, leftist and nationalist block.329 “The funds,” an Israeli
military governor in Gaza explained, “are used for both mosques and religious schools, with
the purpose of strengthening a force that runs counter to the pro-PLO leftists.”330 The Israeli
administration understood the vitality of the container of nation-state acting as a factor of
legitimation in the global regime of governance. Israeli political leaders shrewdly utilized this
reality by acting as the gatekeeper to the recognition of the legitimacy of Palestinian political
movements internationally. The very lure of international recognition, often lead Palestinian
factions to change their internal policies- with a trend towards tropes of the nation-state.
The Mujamae el-Islami considered the PLO, rather than Zionism, as the primary enemy to
be targeted as they considered these factions to have committed the unpardonable sin of
causing the failure of liberation due to their encouragement of the younger generation to
abandon Islam on behalf of mere secular national aspirations. Emulating the nation-statist
logic of the Israeli administration and Fateh before them, Hamas would begin to consolidate
its internal legitimization by utilizing the PLO to fill the necessary container of an internal
“enemy.”331 Thus, Fateh filled the role of Hamas’ savage slot. The primary target of the
Islamists was thus the weakening of a secular nationalist discourse, some going so far as to
consider the nation-state an “abomination.”332 For many Islamists across the region, the
nation-state was a secular container that opposed an Islamic rubric of umma. As Hamas
leader Mahmoud el-Zahhar puts it, “a pebble in a pool leaves a ceries of concentric circles. I
live in Rimal quarter. This quarter is in Gaza. Gaza is in Palestine. Palestine is in the Arab
world. The Arab world is in the Islamic world. The error arises when you try to substitute a
little circle for a bigger one, for instance, making the small circle of narrow nationalism a
substitute for the large circle of the great community of believers.”333 One widely distributed
Brotherhood publication in the West Bank and Gaza advocated efforts to "expose the traitors,
agents and proponents of nationalism and... bring about Palestinian awareness of the true
nature of its battle with Zionism."334 Following the burning of the Red Crescent Society the
324
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 110.
Bourdieu, 1985: 736.
326
Roy, 2003: 16. Islamic banking became a further space of contestation where this religious movement found
potential to expand its counter-hegemony by creating an alternative religion sanctioned network of institutions.
327
el-Sarraj, Dr Iyad, interview with author, 24 January 2008. Gaza City.
328
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 104.
329
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 126; 151.
330
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 128.
331
See sections 1.2. and 2.1.2.
332
Khalidi, 1991: 1370.
333
Zahhar and Hijazi, 1995: 84.
334
Cobban, 1990: 214.
325
48
Mujamae smashed liquor stores and two cinemas in Gaza City in their effort of reforming
society to build a true culture of Islamic resistance.335
Initially, the Mujamae el-Islami did not print its own tracts or religious texts and used only
Egyptian materials. As all printed materials had to pass the Israeli sensor this word-of-mouth
approach enabled the Mujamae members to carry out their agenda of counter-hegemony
whether it was approved by the Israeli authorities or not.336 This method of oral dissemination
revealed the difference of their non-nationalist aspirations vis-à-vis the nationalist discourse
of the Israelis and the PLO.337 Yet, all this would change after the eruption of the Intifada in
1987 and reshaped not only the Gaza Strip’s landscape, but also the role of the Muslim
Brotherhood there.
3.1.1. UMMA TO NATION-STATE: Intifada And The Nationalism Counter-Myth
“The victory of Hamas… demonstrates not the collapse of the system of prosthetic
sovereignty but, paradoxically, its culmination.”
- Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land
"Parties are only the nomenklatur of classes."
- Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
The Intifada began spontaneously born out of the extent of the Israeli occupation’s
suppression of Palestinians, manifesting itself as an explosion of resistance towards Israeli
policies. One of the contenders in the war of positions for leadership was the familiar
Mujamae el-Islami under the new guise of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas. At the
start of the Intifada in 1987, the Mujamae, headed by sheikh Ahmed Yasin came under
increasing pressure from the movement’s younger generation who were ready to join active
resistance. The older generation leaders were more hesitant to enter the stage of jihad before
they deemed society prepared to do so.338 The senior leaders, buckling under the pressure,
established the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in the first month of the uprising as a
wing of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood with a mission of participating in the Intifada. It
would not take long before the Hamas eclipsed its founding body. In their charter the Hamas
leadership, all doubling as representatives of the Mujama el-Islami, declared all peace
initiatives “a waste of time,” and considered jihad a duty “when our enemies usurp some
Islamic lands.”339 Hamas’ long-term plan was the liberation of Palestine, “to raise the banner
of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”340 In the immediate, Hamas was able to delay such
goals by the division of their vision into historic and interim solutions, with respective longand short-term aspirations.341 In later stages this division between the practical solution and
an eschatological vision would come to be embodied in the dialectic of the movement’s
rhetoric and its praxis. As Hamas gained new political responsibilities while holding on to the
same totalizing aspirations of liberation- the vague “liberation of Palestine”- it emulated its
political rival by utilizing the same indefinite rhetoric in order to maintain its revolutionary
and militant ring while quietly toning down their oppositional actions. Though much of the
335
Lesch, 1985: 57.
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 130.
337
Benedict Anderson explicates the centrality of the printing press in disseminating the ideas of nationalism
(Anderson, 2003).
338
Gramsci, 1971: 11; al-Ghazali, 1988: 177. Glimmers of a similar trend can be identified in Egypt. On April 18th
2008 Al-Masry Al-Youm reported that 700 Brotherhood youths had determined to join the May 4th strikes, despite
the leadership’s opposition to their calls. A few days later Brotherhood spiritual guide Mahdi Akif declared the
Brotherhoods official endorsement of the 4 May events.
339
Hamas, 1988: §13 & 15.
340
Hamas, 1988: §13.
341
Klein, 1997: 115; Hroub, 2002: 66.
336
49
PLO establishment had already made the considerable shift from resistance to taking on the
legal rhetoric of nation-building and a neo-liberal economic stance while invalidating
violence against the occupation, some significant though hidden discord still remains.
Shuhada el-Aqsa, the militant wing of Fateh, which formed during the second Intifada,
revealed the anachronistic resistance desire of an otherwise well established political
movement.342
On an ideological plane, the establishment of an “Islamic” Palestinian state formed a
stepping-stone for the emergence of the Islamic umma.343 Yet, in this interpretive step, Hamas
split with both its spiritual forefathers of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as well as historic
Islamic precedent.344 The same urgency that overshadowed Sayyid Qutb’s later writings in
prison, calling for the overthrowing of the corrupt regime that had put him there, occupied the
writings of Hamas who had been born in a condition of occupation.345 Hamas’ social teaching
was almost verbatim a repetition of Qutb’s.346 Much of the distinction that caused el-Jihad elIslami to break from Hamas was blurred at the juncture of Hamas’ entry into the realm of
military resistance.
Hamas’ formation at a critical moment in Palestinians’ social conscience enabled it to
capture the public’s imagination and surpass the popularity of its rival Islamic faction- elJihad el-Islami. As the PLO began to move from resistance to negotiation, and as the
prioritization of the Palestinian cause diminished in the Arab world, Hamas began to shift
into a central space of leading the resistance.347 Yet, Hamas carried their new stance carefully,
as Sheikh Yasin’s words would identify in an interview on April 30th 1989. Regarding the
announcement of independence, Yasin stated, "I approve of the establishment of a state, but I
refuse to relinquish the remaining territory of my homeland, Palestine."348 In their charter
Hamas spoke very highly of their rival faction, considering the PLO “a father, a brother, a
relative, a friend,” and a “falcon,” whose missing wings Hamas believed itself to embody.349
The falcon metaphor is likely to have been inspired by Qutb’s reference to the secular state
without Islam as a one-winged bird because it lacked the necessary component of Islamic
governance that Hamas was offering. This conflicted relationship would ebb and flow over
the coming decades and came to personify a growing divide in Palestinian society.
Hamas departed from their spiritual forefathers, Sayyed Qutb and Mawlana Mawdudi
through their vociferous attachment to a local territory. Qutb and Mawdudi had argued clearly
against the final protection or expansion of any specific dar el-islam, national territory.350 The
Hamas charter states,
“[w]hile other nationalisms consist of material, human and territorial considerations,
the nationality of Hamas also carries, in addition to all those, the all important divine
factors which lend to it its spirit and life; so much so that it connects with the origin of
the spirit and the source of life and raises in the skies of the Homeland the Banner of
the Lord, thus inexorably connecting earth with Heaven.”351
Hereby Hamas shows its desire to “subsume Palestinian nationalism within one or another
form of Islamic identity.”352 These Islamic values Hamas asserts will first transform the soul
of the Muslim, then her society and state. While most of Hamas’ charter is based significantly
342
See further chapter 2.1.
Nuesse, 1998: 50.
344
See further section 2.2.
345
Nuesse, 1998: 56.
346
Nuesse, 1998: 56; 87.
347
Hroub, 2002: 36-8.
348
el-Nahar newspaper cited in Cobban, 1990: 216.
349
Hamas, 1988: §27. See Nettler, 1994.
350
“Those who claim that jihad intends to defend Muslim territory, overlook the programme of Islam and consider
it less important than territory” (Qutb, 1989: 84 cited Nuesse, 1998: 48).
351
Hamas Charter, §12.
352
Khalidi, 1997: 148f.
343
50
on the Muslim Brotherhood, their straying from this path shows their propensity for the use of
ijtihad in accordance with the urgent reality of their political and social context.353 Hamas
goes on to paint a vision of a liberated Palestine as a necessary step towards liberating the
umma. The movement continues to hold these two realities in constant tension.354 The
dilemma Hamas faced was whether it would give precedence to “Islamizing Palestine” or
“Palestinianizing Islam.”355 The first, entailed the potential for remaining outside of the
limiting boundaries of nation-statism, while the latter placed the messianic ideology within
the rubric of nation-state.
By entering into the race of direct opposition with its occupying power Hamas had to
address its perceived link with Israel to better its image in a centripetal war of position in an
attempt to undermine the popularity of the PLO. Only a nationalist agenda would enable the
Islamic party to gather the necessary following to become a serious contender in the contest
for a claim to legitimate Palestinian representation.356 By building their nationalist agenda
around Islam they used a language the masses could understand, at the strategic moment
when other forms of nationalism were in decline.357 The ongoing exceptional situation of
Palestinians continuously calls for extreme measures of response. Following the death of
Nasir and the decreasing influence of leftist movements- due to their perceived “failure”- an
Islamic coloring to resistance increasingly crystallized itself as the most viable “language” for
popular mobilization in search of an exit from the impasse of occupation. In the early months
of the Intifada, Hamas would back the UNLU leadership’s call for strikes and protests. Yet, at
times the Islamists started penning their own communiqués- though with smaller turnouts
than the UNLU- revealing the considerable popular base the movement had formed over the
years. In the summer of 1989 in defiance of the UNLU’s non-violent strategy, Hamas killed
two Israeli soldiers, thus setting itself apart from the other nationalist leadership as well as
successfully cutting all previous ties with Israel.358 Only after this first attack against Israeli
targets, were relations between Israel and Hamas completely severed. Hamas’ successful use
of force revealed the ability of violence in “constitut[ing] a political party.”359 In May 1989
the Israeli authorities again arrested Ahmed Yasin and for the first time declared Hamas a
“terrorist organization.”360 Following this incident, the internal nationalist contest escalated,
evolving into a centripetal/centrifugal tit for tat war of position whereby legitimacy was
sought wherever it could be found, locally, regionally and beyond.361 While one side could
garner the larger support on the Palestinian street in the West Bank and Gaza and among the
Arab public elsewhere, the other increasingly received the blessing of suit-clad political
decision-makers the world over. Yet, moments like Hamas’ takeover of 2007 divided the
playing field among a public that primarily assessed the movements by their use of violence.
While some onlookers assessed the movement’s stance towards colonialism, others judged
the perceived fairness of militant action. The clash revealed itself further in that both Hamas
and PLO factions vied over the very similar constituency, primarily camp refugees and the
lower middle class.362
A number of regional shifts following the start of the Intifada played into the change of
position of the Mujamae el-Islami. The vacuum of opposition brought about by the end of the
cold war as well as the declining influence of politically left-oriented movements in the Arab
world following Nasir’s defeat in the late 70s created the possibility for an Islamist agenda as
353
L. Carl Brown argues that in history Islam actually has tended more towards division of religion and state only
recently has the call emerged to return to the early years of Islam where these overlapped (Brown, 2000).
354
See section I.
355
Klein, 1997: 113; Lybarger, 2007: 10.
356
Abu Amr 1993: 18
357
Lybarger, 2007: 99.
358
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 152.
359
Fanon, 1991: 73.
360
Cobban, 1990: 216.
361
Trouillot, 2003: 22. See n.304.
362
Baumgarten, 2005: 21; Lybarger 2007: 85.
51
an alternative nationalist program. The Islamists had rejected joining the PLO in the past and
thus were seen as a cohesive entity seperate of the coalition of PLO. Meanwhile, the PLO’s
unbridled support of Saddam Hussein in his war on Kuwait brought about a decisive shift in
financial flows whereby a vast amount of Saudi funding was re-directed from the PLO to
Hamas.363 The Islamic movement was furthermore able to build on the success of the Iranian
revolution to ultimately emerge as the sole alternative to the existent nationalist movement. In
the early eighties the Brotherhood had experienced a second migration from among its ranks,
this time by the more radical members who would no longer toe the Brotherhood’s line of
gradually preparing society for jihad. El-Jihad el-Islami formed with just this call, prioritizing
jihad against the occupation over reforming society.364 Thus, in contrast to Fateh and Hamas,”
el-Jihad have at least been able to resist acceding to nationalism as “an integral part of the
Westernization story.”365 El-Jihad el-Islami key leaders opposed the emerging nationalist
nature of the Mujamae claiming, “it is futile for the Islamists to dream of complete
independence or a comprehensive civilizational revival, while the nature of colonial operation
remain fully entrenched, fully fortified and fully equipped in Palestine.”366 Yet, while they did
not accede to this narration, the group did place their resistance within the rubric of another
totalizing narrative, claiming their battle was not just for the “Palestinian people alone,” but a
“battle for Islam, a battle for the future of the entire umma.”367 This meant the group merely
replaced one messianic ideology for another. The intense Israeli crackdown on el-Jihad
especially during the start of the Intifada revealed that the occupying regime was caught off
guard thus placing the blame for the uprising on the more established Islamist movement.
Due to its non-conformist approach to resistance el-Jihad members regularly remained the
Israeli military’s primary targets and “legitimate” assassination targets. Furthermore, due to
its non- or anti-nationalist stance the movement never grew to significantly compete with
other populist parties.
On February 25th 1994 an Israeli settler entered the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron murdering
32 Palestinian worshippers. On the 6th of April, 41 days after the attack, Hamas responded
with its first military offensive on Israeli civilians through two bombings on Israeli buses in
Northern Israel.368 Israeli authorities reacted by exiling hundreds of Hamas and Jihad Islami
leaders to majd el-zehur, an Israeli-occupied no-man’s-land in Southern Lebanon. The
combined popularity of Hamas following the military attacks and the vacuum left behind with
most Jihad leadership successfully exiled- many senior Hamas operatives evaded exile- gave
Hamas the further chance to capitalize on its claim for Palestinian leadership. The ensuing
process of defining the nation-state existed in a vacuum of statehood, which challenged the
conception of what precisely the state should be and whether it should be. What would the
determining factors of cohesiveness be? Would they be defined by national, religious, class or
economic categories? Which begged the question if such a vision could avoid situating itself
within a pre-determined narration. These features raised the stakes for national control and
increased the political rivalry in the Palestinian political field. An accentuated rivalry, and its
commentator’s propensity to simplify it for the public eye, lead to the blurring of differences
between the two competing parties.
3.1.2. CONTESTING (IL-)LEGITIMACY AND THE TROPE OF VIOLENCE
“All politics is a struggle for power; the ultimate kind of power is violence”
- C. Wright Mills
“We used terrorism to establish our state.
363
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 155.
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 155.
365
Pappe, 2004: 6.
366
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 118.
367
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 118.
368
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 167; Baumgarten, 2005: 40.
364
52
Why should we expect the Palestinians to be any different?”
– Leah Rabin
The first Intifada started to fade under the increasing Israeli clampdown on Palestinian
resistance as well as the PLO’s overtures to negotiations. The failure of the Madrid
negotiations raised hopes among Hamas’ constituency that their time of legitimate
representation had finally come. Yet, Israel and the PLO were secretly outmaneuvering the
rising popularity of the movement through negotiations at Oslo. Joseph Massad points out the
Israeli strategic recognition of the PLO as the “sole representative of the Palestinians” at the
precise moment that the body ceased being so.369 This Israeli admission of the PLO’s seeming
legitimacy not only undermined the pseudo-state building process the movement was about to
initiate, but also created an obstacle for their competitors. Hamas who, having assumed a vast
increase in local legitimacy would have to first prove their local popularity while backing it
with external recognition. Hamas’ exclusion from talks despite its popular support
furthermore signified Israel, the PLO and the international community’s denial of Hamas grip
on local legitimacy.370 The PLO’s fast track to international legitimacy raised a number of
questions regarding the validity of such achieved centrifugal legitimacy within the nationstate regime versus a localized claim to legitimacy. Violence plays a large role in this trend.
When international players deem Hamas an unlawful player- citing its “illegitimate” use of
force- despite their local sanction, it reveals the hypocritical utility of democracy as a
legitimating trope.
3.1.2.1.VIOLENCE/TERROR
“Palestine has been put on the map with the beginning of the Palestinian resistance. It will
disappear from the map the moment we stop our resistance.”
- Khalid Mishal, Hamas Political Bureau Chief
Political theorist Carl Schmitt’s conceptualization of the state of exception draws on
philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard’s formulation of the suspension of the ethical.
Schmitt considers all law to be “situational law.”371 State sovereignty must therefore be
“properly juridically defined not as the monopoly to sanction or to rule but as the monopoly
to decide, where the word “monopoly” is used in a general sense that is still to be
developed.”372 Kierkegaard describes ethical standardization as suspended during an incident
of “divine intervention” as that faced by Abraham’s intention of sacrificing his son. The
comparison depicts the political sovereign as the one who both creates an order as well as
maintains the power to suspend it at will. It is such logic of exception that is entailed in
Israel’s emergence as a global political player. The Palestinians are on the recipient end of
this tabula of ethical suspension and in full approval of an on-looking international
community, which applies its own “divine” exceptions when deemed fit. In replying to such
internationally sanctioned positions, Hamas would eventually lean towards a stance of
negotiation in the hope of fulfilling the desire of national sovereignty. Hannah Arendt writes,
“[p]ower needs no justification, being inherent in the very existence of political communities,
what it does need is legitimacy.”373 And it was precisely this legitimacy that Israel sought and
continues to seek to deny Hamas. Meanwhile, with the increased centrality of religion within
the Palestinian discourse boundaries became increasingly blurred, as Hamas took on more
nationalist tendencies, while the PLO secularized religion in its addresses. On one occasion
when the PLO’s authority was challenged Abu Ammar would insist that the PLO’s status of
369
Massad, 2006: 98.
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 161.
371
Agamben, 1998: 16.
372
Agamben, 1998: 16.
373
Arendt, 2003: 241
370
53
legitimacy came from “the blood of its martyrs.” Questioning this reality he claimed in
flowery Islamic Arabic, would equate an “act of blasphemy that contravened ‘[Islamic] law,
belief, religion, homeland and Arabism and invited fitna (Islamic dissent).’”374
Frantz Fanon writes, “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon,” pointing to the fact
that violence is first inserted into the economy of debate through the intrusion of the
colonizer, rather than the portrayed violence as a reaction to the colonizer.375 This
differentiated cycle of violence identifies the colonizer as “the bringer of violence into the
house and mind of the native.”376 Mahmoud el-Zahhar has pointed out Israel’s religiously
inspired use of violence as predating the Islamic nature of a current thread of Palestinian
nationalism, while the continuous aim of retaining the Jewish nature of Israel is the
underlying justification for Israeli state sanctioned violence.377 In this sense the two
movements- Zionism and the Islamic ideology of Hamas are seeking to replace the present
“disorder” with their respective deemed “divinely” inspired order-378 both orders are
hegemonic, as well as colonial. Much like the colonial is still present in the post-colonial
state, Hamas was increasingly asserting a colonial logic thus, in a sense, colonizing its own
people, transforming the landscape yet again according to a messianic ideology.379
In the hegemonic conception of liberal peace, violence is only sanctioned to a player within
a hegemonic club of nation-states, of which Israel is one and Palestine is not. Following the
vacuum of power left by the end of the cold war, liberation struggles are no longer deemed
legitimate, and liberal peace with its promise to end “war” abolishes the idea of a violent “just
cause” outside of an explicitly defined framework.380 By attempting to enter the “formal
networks” of liberal governance the PLO sought to engage the political game in search of
internationally deemed legitimacy. Doing so prohibited them from challenging the order itself
subsequently being required to make the existent order “work better.”381 By directing violence
away from their colonizer and onto their own in an attempt to “maintain security” the use of
force was legitimized according to global standards of international law. The leaders of the
Israeli occupation meanwhile have narrated their existence as a liberation struggle become
legitimate by entering the club of nation-states in 1948. Israeli political leaders are loath to be
identified as a colonizer because for some this would justify the violence carried out against
their now sovereign territory in the form of a liberation struggle. Israeli strategy entails its
hegemony over the conflict’s discourse whereby Israel has been depicted as a legitimate body
vis-à-vis the terror of its opposition- whether the PLO or Hamas or others. Meanwhile, the
Israeli discourse- in concert with liberal government- successfully delegitimizes indigenous
leadership by illegitimizing the colonized’s use of force. This illegitimate use of force’s
demarcation as “terrorist” carries a negative definition whereby the terrorist’s other becomes
the non-terrorist.382 Such linguistic games beg the question, can the deemed “non-terrorist”
cause no terror? Joseph Massad posits, “[t]error then is a discourse about a colonial identity
that needs to differentiate itself but always fails.”383
At the Security Council in December 1987, a resolution against terrorism was passed. The
only two objecting votes of Israel and the USA were in opposition to a paragraph that
legitimated “the rights of people struggling against racist and colonialist regimes or foreign
military occupation to continue with their resistance.”384 The two states sought to confirm the
exclusivity of the legitimate use of force to remain in the hands of a particular club of nation374
Sayegh, 1997: 650ff.
Fanon, 1991: 35.
376
Fanon, 1991: 38.
377
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 186.
378
Juergensmeyer, 1993: 32.
379
See further Mbembe in chapter 2.1.
380
Duffield, 2001: 128.
381
Duffield, 2001: 130.
382
Massad, 2006: 1.
383
Massad, 2006: 8.
384
Chomsky, 2003: 221
375
54
states vis-à-vis any resistance towards them. In the Palestinian-Israeli context the use of force
remains a vital dimension of local and external legitimacy seeking of parties on all sides. By
participating in elections in 2003 and then 2005, Hamas has begun the process of seeking this
“formal” recognition in constant contestation with its local legitimacy. Accordingly, an
ideological shift results in downplaying the movement’s stance on liberation while retaining
its rhetoric of militant liberation.
The el-Aqsa Intifada escalated competition over the use of force to an unprecedented level.
As settlement construction escalated drastically during the post-Oslo period and without any
further achievements that had been hoped for from the PA, Hamas’ popularity had rebound
after the short-lived increase in the popularity of the PLO in the post-Oslo period. The Oslo
process proved itself to be a setback, crystallizing the necessity for a violent Palestinian
reaction to the unhindered repressive trends of the occupation. Following the establishment of
the PA, Hamas had maneuvered very carefully going out of its way to avoid a clash with the
PA and reducing its use of violence when this was in line with popular opinion. With the
aspirations placed on the peace process violence had initially been frowned upon. Following a
negotiated cease-fire in 1995 Hamas spokesman Mahmoud el-Zahhar would explain a stance
that was very reminiscent of the PLO’s before it. Hamas, he said, always calculates "the
benefit and cost of continued armed operations. If we can fulfill our goals without violence,
we will do so. Violence is a means, not a goal.”385 In an internal document dated 6 April 1994
the Islamist leadership declared, “[o]ur political and informational discourse must focus on
that Israel is our foremost and our only enemy, that the central purpose of our people is to
resist the Zionist occupation.”386 Through such political pragmatism the movement continued
its upsurge in nationalistic coloring anticipating its aim of a Palestinian- Islamic- nation-state.
3.1.2.2. INTIFADA EL-AQSA AND THE EL-QAEDA TROPE
The el-Aqsa Intifada began as a protest movement within the ranks of Fateh. Disillusioned
with the outcome of the Oslo process and the capitulation of higher up leadership the tanzimat
within Fateh- a younger cadre of leaders that hadn’t left with the PLO in the 70s- lead the
first four violent months of the Intifada.387 In this vein of violent resistance the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade formed, a force made up of Fateh members often acting independently of
the PA and senior Fateh leadership.388 The National and Islamic Higher Committee for the
Follow-Up of the Intifada (NIHC) came into being with Hamas and Fateh cooperation.
Hamas’ willingness to coordinate with their “secular” foe when their political nationalist aims
overlapped revealed the group’s true political nature. In those years the PA lost the monopoly
over the use of force vis-à-vis its constituency as its legitimacy began to be increasingly
questioned by the Palestinian street.389 The contestation over violence entailed a public that
once again increasingly supported violence and opposed cracking down on either Hamas or
the Fateh young guard involved in violent resistance.390 To retain his seat of power and
deemed legitimacy Arafat was forced to tolerate the young guard’s alliance with the Islamists
and their use of force in confronting the Israeli army, bringing about an ongoing negotiation
process within the party.391 Starting in March 2001 as Israel started targeting PA security
headquarters, Arafat undermined the PA’s external legitimacy by sanctioning the
participation of members of his Presidential Guard and intelligence services in attacks on
Israeli soldiers and settlers in an effort to strengthen his local standing. With the rise of the el385
Baumgarten, 2005: 41.
Hroub, 2000: 62f.
387
Usher, 2005.
388
Hroub, 2004: 25.
389
Shikaki, 2002: 102.
390
Shikaki, 2002: 102.
391
Shikaki, 2002: 95.
386
55
Aqsa Intifada, Hamas’ “resistance project”- in contrast to the PLO’s negotiations policiesgained ground as a “national agenda.”392 In a 2007 Washington Post op-ed Hamas advisor
Ahmed Yousef affirmed this evolving reformulation of Hamas,
“The struggle has always been against the Israeli agenda of ethnic cleansing and
conquest. Hamas is a movement of Palestinian liberation and nationalism… Yet it
remains that Hamas has a world in common with Fatah and other parties, and they all
share the same goals -- the end of occupation; the release of political prisoners; the
right of return for all Palestinians; and freedom to be a nation equal among nations,
secure in its own borders and at peace.”393
Following the 11th of September attacks in New York and Washington the discourse
regarding Hamas took a critical shift. These events are an example of Walter Benjamin’s
depiction of history made up of images, shaping the perception of movements such as Hamas
no matter what role they did or did not play and despite the position they would take to such
an “event.” Following this attack the pressure on Hamas, and consequently all Palestinians,
increased sharply as Sharon successfully equated the Palestinian resistance with international
terrorism and likening Hamas to el-Qaeda.394 Further, the Israeli Prime Minister was able to
alter the narrative in his favor by explicitly calling on the PA to "dismantle terrorist
organizations." Hamas’ response to the attacks settled their position as a national liberation
movement once and for all, by citing political differences with el-Qaeda rather than pointing
to religious differences. Thus after condemning the attacks Hamas emphasized that its battle
was solely against the Israeli occupation declaring that, it did not target non-Israeli
individuals or interests and never operated outside Mandatory Palestine.395 Such clear
statements have made little difference either in the popular perception of Hamas in the
“West,” or among external policy makers. All American peace initiatives would thus
highlight the aim of “ending terrorism” which had become a much easier agenda in light of
the liberal peace era to follow the September 11th attacks. The resolve to end all Palestinian
“violence”- no matter Israel’s use of it- as a precondition to any “peace” mirrored the
exceptional Israeli legitimization of the use of torture in 1987- later to be emulated by the
USA.396 American president George Bush would say, “the most important condition for peace
is to dismantle organizations whose vision is to destroy peace.”397 For Palestinians “peace”
here was to mean a complete acceptance of the logic of nation-statism and conclusive
submission to the domination of Israel- economically, socially and politically.
Between mid 2001-2004 the Israeli military carried out 320 assassinations of Hamas
members, including the killing of 15 people in the assassination of Salah Shehada with
sixteen F16 bombs.398 No legal repercussions followed the assassinations. Meanwhile,
Hamas’ use of violence- deemed illegitimate by external actors- was used to undermine the
PA’s authority when the Road Map called for “sustained, targeted, and effective operations
aimed at confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities
and infrastructure.”399 A cyclical situation ensued, Hamas was successfully undermining the
PA’s local legitimacy by continuing to use violence approved of locally. Meanwhile, external
players considered the end of such acts a requirement for a “political process” to proceed. The
USA leadership further linked the implementation of the Road Map to the appointment of a
Prime Minister with the “authority” to end all violence. Revealing the ability of external
forces to manipulate Arafat, the PA president appointed Mahmoud Abbas- a self-identified
392
Hroub, 2004: 21.
Yousef, June 20, 2007.
394
Hroub. 2004: 26.
395
Hroub. 2004: 26n. 12.
396
Hajjar, 2004; Agamben, 1998.
397
Hroub. 2004: 30.
398
Hroub, 2004: 29.
399
Road Map, 30 April 2003.
393
56
espouser of “non-violent” resistance- as Prime Minster.400 Following Hamas’ takeover of the
Gaza Strip in June 2007, Bush called Abbas “the president of all the Palestinians” and “a
reasonable voice among the extremists.”401 A few weeks later in a further effort to utilize the
taboo nature of violence and terror, Abbas would again hark on a link between Hamas and elQaeda claiming that, "thanks to the support of Hamas, el-Qaeda is entering Gaza."402
Meanwhile, Hamas continued on its path towards sought-after centrifugal legitimacy of
nation-statism by participating in democratic elections. Any two-state solution implied a de
facto recognition not only of Israel- albeit in the guise of an Islamist long-term armistice or
truce- but also the legitimization of the Oslo process, which legally undermined any stance of
liberation.403 Following Oslo Mahmoud el-Zahhar had explained Hamas’ position saying,
“we only support... popular elections to the popular institutions such as the municipalities and
professional associations because they are not part of the Oslo autonomy and don’t give
legitimacy to the occupation.”404 Yet, by 2003 Hamas’ municipality election run paved the
way for their victory in the 2005 parliamentary elections. The movement had already early on
justified that democratic elections compared to the Islamic interpretation of shura
(consultation).405 Hamas’ declaration of election participation in the mid-90s had revealed a
split within the movement due to such a stance’s shift towards a desire for territorial
sovereignty.406 Hamas’ succeeded in utilizing religion as justification for actions, while the
rhetoric of tahdia and hudna rather than referencing liberal peace deflected any tendencies to
identify their latest actions with similar trends of the PLO. As the Islamic Resistance
Movement’s actions and statement had religious underpinnings it reduced the need for purely
ideological justification. By 2005 Hamas’ election run aroused little tension. Following the
election victory the Islamic group began a whole new process of negotiating the use of
legitimate violence both within the borders of the Gaza Strip and outside them.
3.1.2.1.. THE GAZA STRIP: Hamas’ Re-Ordering of Space
A. Transforming Everyday Sites
“The climax of terror is reached when the police state begins to devour its own children,
when yesterday’s executioner becomes today’s victim.”
- Hannah Arendt, On Violence
“Now it is much worse, because you cannot defend yourself properly [against Hamas], you
cannot know who would do something to you… it could be your neighbor, your brother or
your relative. Such attacks are much harder to prevent.
I hardly ever spend the night at home.”
- Hassan, member of PA security force, Beach Camp, Gaza407
During legislative elections in 2006 Hamas- running under the title of Change and
Reformation- recreated the Palestinian flag by expanding the green third of the flag to take up
most of the flag’s space while adding the party’s slogan within it. Other parties were soon to
follow suit using their respective party colors to alter the national flag.408 When the Hamas
forces had reached the heart of Gaza City in June of 2007 they replaced the Palestinian flag
adorning the Palestinian Legislative Council building with their party flag. This was only the
beginning of a reformation of the Gaza Strip’s politico-spatial landscape.
400
Hroub, 2004: 29.
Hadid, 20 June 2007.
402
Alsharq Al-Awsat. 10 July 2007.
403
Baumgarten, 2005: 42.
404
Milton-Edwards, 2005: 320.
405
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 165.
406
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 163.
407
Hassan, interview with author, 1 June 2007. Gaza City.
408
el-Zaeem, Sharhabeel, interview with author, 21 January 2008. Gaza City.
401
57
In December of 2007 Anwar watched from his office window as a group of students raised
the Fateh flag on a building of the el-Aqsa University campus in Gaza City. The university is
funded and run by Fateh supporters. An unknown observer called the Hamas Executive
Security Force (el-tanfizeya) to report on the action, which, like the Palestinian flag under the
Israeli administration, was illegal. The tanfizeya forces beat the students breaking one
student’s limb, while causing the other severe head injuries. Next, the Executive Security
Forces blocked the university entrance for 30 minutes before clearing the way for the
ambulance carrying the injured- reminding onlookers of commonly utilized Israeli
methods.409 During the end of 2007 the presence of a Fateh flag on the roof a house identified
its inhabitants’ allegiance to the West Bank emergency cabinet. Reports were widespread that
Fateh informants reported on Gaza residents who removed their flags as signifying their
switched allegiance to Gaza’s new government. If these were employees of the former PA
apparatus they had their incomes cut. The matter was not confined to flags. When the
Ramallah based PA commanded doctors on their payroll to leave their hospitals by 11am,
many rejected because they simply could not abandon their patients due to internal politics.
All PA employees faced a similar challenge as the Ramallah PA started cutting many of their
incomes, leaving them with the option of finding other means of income or switching
allegiance to Hamas and abiding by their rules in order to be on a Hamas payroll.410 The Gaza
government had its own informants, unemployed young men- “drones” (zanana) in local
parlance- as well as “children of the mosque”- who informed on non-Hamas activities.411
Subsequent to Hamas forces “liberating” neighborhoods or national landmarks during the
takeover they were renamed according to the party’s political imagination. Thus they altered
the name of the roundabout facing PA president Mahmoud Abbas’ residence from the “Abu
Mazen roundabout” (dawwar Abu Mazen) to dawwar el-Ameen Muhammed. On a Palestinian
chat forum one user remarked on the change of naming saying, “let us then change all of the
secular state with Islamic titles and names of the prophet.”412 The Tel el-Hawwa
neighborhood, where Hamas forces won one of the most strategic victories over Fateh’s
Preventative Forces, was renamed Tel el-Islam, the “hill of Islam,” while the Islamists
changed the name of el-Quds (Jerusalem) Hospital located there to Tel el-Islam Hospital.
Gaza’s authorities then started taking control of all Fateh institutions, from schools, to relief
agencies, universities, mosques and hospitals. One such hospital was the Fata hospital,
previously owned and operated by Muhammed Dahlan’s wife.
On the 17th of June 2007 I met with Fata Hospital administrator Abu Karim in the recently
re-named neighborhood of Tel el-Islam in Gaza City. The building was empty; he told me
people were afraid of coming to work fearing they would lose their salaries according to
Fateh orders from Ramallah. I was surprised the building had been left fully intact
considering Hamas’ deep opposition to Muhammed Dahlan. The building was new and
looked organized. The few staff members that were there- despite the hospital not functioningcame daily fearing it would be looted. In the corner of the room lay a prayer rug, along one
of the walls a cabinet containing between 30 and 40 large binders. Throughout our
conversation Abu Karim received calls from sources unknown to me informing him of the
members of the emergency government being formed in Ramallah. The hospital administrator
rejoiced over the information, especially as five of the newly appointed members were from
Gaza. Abu Karim considered this new cabinet legitimate and to be representing him. A few
weeks later Hamas security forces stormed the hospital and barred all employees from
returning to the premises of the hospital.413
409
Anwar, interview with author, 1 January 2008. Gaza City.
See chapter IV.II.A for the possible economic incentives behind such discharges.
411
ICG, 2008b: 7.
412
Palestine’s Dialogue Forum. 29 February 2008.
413
Abu Karim, interview with author, 17 June 2007. Gaza City.
410
58
For Abu Karim, the unprecedented nature of the utilized violence of Palestinians against
Palestinians during the “takeover” was what deemed Hamas illegitimate. Furthermore, his
perception of the democratically elected leadership was tainted by their unwarranted use of
force. For Abu Karim, like many other Fateh supporters, legitimate violence was retained in
the “established” forces of the PA that had never been handed over to the new Hamas cabinet.
The administration of mosques also changed hands after the Hamas takeover in June of
2007. Fateh administered mosques all over Gaza and at least one el-Jihad el-Islami mosque
fell under the jurisdiction of Hamas.
Yusef is 18 and a member of the PFLP. In the past he had attended three different mosques
to pray but eventually stopped frequenting all of them. Each time following an invitation to
attend a private meeting with a sheikh, Yusef never returned. He did not want to undergo
brainwashing (taebi’a) he said and rather wants to choose for himself what to believe. He
says he would leave Gaza at the first opportunity he has. Yusef’s brother Yunis is 16 and a
Hamas member. He says he would never leave Gaza because it is “ard el-ribat” [meaning
the land to which one is tied where those that stay tied (rabit) are said to have many rewards
in heaven] 414. At the mosque they teach him about “jihad and the life of the prophet.” Yusef
likes to spend time on the computer. When his neighbor- who is listening in on the
conversation- jokes that he is chatting with girls in Morocco, he does not deny it. Yunis says
he does not stay online much, he only checks the news he says. He wants to grow up and
carry an RPG.415
Following Hamas’ taking control of the Gaza Strip the dress code changed not so much due
to newly instituted laws but by societal moral default. The member of a large clan in Gaza
City remarked, “I stopped praying because I was afraid people would think I was Hamas.”416
Under social pressure almost all women veil in public, while men are no longer permitted to
visit Gaza’s beaches topless, women must enter the water fully veiled. Meanwhile the new
government set an 11pm curfew, stating that after midnight anyone violating the curfew may
be shot for suspicion of spying on the resistance.417 In 2008 the Gaza government introduced
a law that all married couples appearing together in public had to be able to provide their
marriage certificate on demand. On numerous occasions murdered women were found by the
roadside. Many such occurrences entailed little follow-up as the killing of women was almost
exclusively due to morally indecent behavior and the new authorities tolerated such forms of
punishment. Shortly after Hamas’ successful ceasing of power in Gaza the movement’s
forces gunned down a recently engaged couple at a Gaza beach for what was deemed
indecent ethical behavior. Hamas leader Mahmoud el-Zahhar acknowledged the mistake and
explained that the government had made a payment (deyya) to the family in recognition of its
misdeed. Following the expulsion of what Hamas deemed “corrupt” Fateh members, elZahhar insisted that all remaining Fateh members ought to also face punishment.418
3.2.2. PRISONS, POLICE SECURITY: Panopticon of Control
“We’ve lived the worst period.
Now we are living the best period since the end of Gaza’s occupation.”
- Mahmoud el-Zahhar
Temporary policemen took to the streets today wearing brand new Hamas police vests; traffic
in the streets has never been so organized and disciplined. Finally, the Gaza Strip has just
414
“[T]he land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of
Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it.” (Hamas Charter §11).
415
Yusef and Younis, interview with author, 17 January 2008. Jabalya Refugee Camp, Gaza.
416
Abu Shady, interview with author, 2 June 2 2007. Gaza City.
417
khalil, interview with author, 9 July 2009.
418
el-Zahhar, Mahmoud, interview with author, 21 July 2007. Gaza City.
59
one government and just one police force governing it. A sense of order and security for most
residents are the upsides that come along with many’s sense of a very uncertain future.419
Hamas’ speedy ability to take control of traffic became a reference for Gaza’s residents that
the new authority was capable of something as basic as traffic delegation. Within a matter of
hours the new authorities had released a network of volunteers onto the streets who took their
jobs very seriously despite their lack of training, which was soon to follow. The PA’s
shortcomings in managing even such tasks in the past added to the revelation of how the PA’s
weaknesses had translated into prevalent lawlessness.420 Yet, this initial show of force would
be only a foretaste of the societal regulation that was to come under Gaza’s new government.
Figure 8: A Hamas banner, Gaza City, June 2007. Source: Philip Rizk
During the takeover, Hamas forces had revealed an unprecedented level of fighting skills that
caught PA security forces off guard. Though the PA’s forces far outnumbered Hamas’ men,
the latter took control of the entire Gaza Strip within the course of days. The first targets were
police stations starting North and South of Gaza City followed by security forces
headquarters, which were fought over and contained in violent and swift maneuvers.
Following the decisive victory over the Preventative Security headquarters on the 13th of June
in Gaza City the remaining PA prisoners were paraded onto the streets in their underwear
with their shirts pulled over their faces in an exhibition of force. Khaled, one of those made to
participate in the spectacle was tortured in the basement of a mosque for four days before
being released.421 Days after the victory Hamas paraded the PA’s police car fleet manned by
new Hamas appointed policemen through the streets of Gaza City again manifesting the
changed hands of authority. The new government further replaced roughly 50,000 security
forces with their own force a quarter the size divided into three main branches to manage
Gaza’s internal security. The Civil Police controlled the strip’s streets, the Internal Security
Forces, modeled on the former Preventative Security Force tended to intelligence while the
National Security Forces, which Hamas called its “army” manned the Gaza Strip’s borders.422
419
Author’s field notes, June 2007.
James Scott refers to the centrality of the role of traffic in asserting control over a people (Scott, 1998: 73-76).
421
Khaled, interview with author, 17th of June, 2007. Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
422
ICG, 2008a: 14.
420
60
Figure 9: Hamas parades police fleet past president Mahmoud Abbas’ abandoned
residence. Gaza City, June 2007. Source: Philip Rizk
Mebmbe described sovereignty as the right to condemn to death.423 The competition over
this right, results in a victor’s attainment thereof and a loser who becomes peripheral.424
Hamas forces quickly started to consolidate their power beyond traffic regulations, striving
for coordination between resistance fighters, intervening when other groups carried out
training without permits, closing training grounds and rounding up Fateh’ sanctioned
weapons.425
The divisive nature of the gun that had been revealed in the el-Aqsa Intifada reached its
culmination in the summer of 2007. Unlike the stone, which had been an internally neutral
method of resistance, the weapons used in the second Intifada were owned and sanctioned by
a multiplicity of political factions. The bearer of such a weapon deemed its owner legitimate
by fighting on their behalf and in their name. Hamas had reversed the tables, thus the
suppression experienced under a Fateh-dominated PA, they now carried out on Fateh. Hamas
thereby de-legitimized not only their weapons, but their authority and their very presence in
the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Hamas has thrived under such conditions, which at times has meant the
counter-intuitive use of force to thwart efforts to plant explosives or launch Qassam rockets
against Israeli targets. Mahmoud el-Zahhar justified the change of position days after the
takeover on the 20th of June stating, “nobody will be a protector of the Israeli border... we are
protecting our people… if they stop their aggression against the Palestinian people, the
Palestinian people will not attack anybody.”426 On another occasion the former Foreign
Minister explained that, “his group was open to a cease-fire with Israel if the army halts its
activities there and in the West Bank,” adding that Hamas was capable of halting all rocket
attacks out of Gaza.427 On various occasions Hamas’ security forces arrested members of
Fateh’s el-Quds Martyr’s Brigades, the Alweyya el-Nasir faction and Jihad el-Islami’s
military wing for launching or trying to launch rockets into Israel during a cease-fire.
Perpetrators were accused of being spies aiming to undermine the strategy of the Islamic
nation.428 As Fateh operatives were the Gaza’s authorities main target, Jihad el-Islami
members on occasion allowed el-Aqsa Brigades fighters to launch attacks under their banner
423
Mbembe, 2003: 11.
Juergensmeyer, 1993: 33.
425
ICG, 2008a: 8.
426
Al-Deeb, 21 June 2007.
427
Hadid, 20 June 2007.
428
See ICG 2008b: 13n. 137; Mostafa, interview with author, 9 July 2009. Ramallah.
424
61
while sheltering their weapons.429 One retired PA security official, commenting on Hamas’
change of policy stated, “Hamas won the elections with a whole series of slogans‘negotiations are haram [forbidden by religion]’; ‘resistance is a sacred right’; ‘Palestinian
blood is a red line’- and then betrayed them.”430 A Jihad Islami leader responded to the
crackdowns saying, “let Hamas stop us… they will be seen as taking steps against resistance
and lose support in the Arab world.”431
Hamas furthermore moved quickly to consolidate its control over clans who could pose a
threat to its authority. Within a matter of days Hamas ascertained the release of British
journalist Alan Johnston who had been kidnapped by the Dughmush clan in Gaza City. An
explosion on the 25th of July 2008 that killed five members of Hamas’ military wing was a
stark reminder that the new authority had failed to establish a monopoly on the use of
weapons in the Gaza Strip. On the second of August, after failed negotiations brokered by
Islamic Jihad, the Executive Security Forces moved in on the shuja’eyya neighborhood to end
resistance stemming from the Hillis clan based there. In an earlier clash between the
executive forces and the clan, many traditional supporters of the shuja’eyya family sided with
Hamas. In August no other families came to the clan’s aid.432 Clashes between Hamas and
Gaza’s clans have revealed the extent of identification with Hamas. “Hamas rose in
popularity because it replaced the family, it created a new identity,” said Dr el-Sarraj, “if I
am Hamas,” he went on, “this becomes a barrier between me and those around me…
someone who is not Hamas is considered an infidel (kafir) or traitor (khayin).”433 Similar to
the nationalism of Fateh, Hamas supporters identified with their party in a familial patriarchal
mode that gives the individual meaning.434 On one occasion after a Qassam member was
scolded by his father he alerted his commander. Upon arriving at the house the squad
physically assaulted the father and informed him, “this is not your son, this is the son of the
Qassam.”435
While crime and lawlessness in general reduced significantly after the government attained
power, its monitoring of violence revealed itself to be selective. While reported crimes, social
disturbances, drug trafficking and deemed moral indecent behavior were investigated and
punished severely, incidents of “morally” motivated crimes, especially against leftist or PLO
institutions often went by unpunished. One drug dealer in Deir el-Balah explained he had
been arrested multiple times and tortured with the aim of confessing on video to have been
involved with a Dahlan funded drug ring.436 Though the perpetrators were religious groups
and likely not affiliated with Hamas, it seemed the new authority did not want to risk its
religious legitimacy by punishing certain religiously justified behavior. On February 14th
2008 a bomb exploded in the Christian-run YMCA in Gaza City, a local organization in Beit
Lahyia in the Northern Gaza Strip was bombed reportedly because it hosted co-ed traditional
dance lessons and across the Gaza Strip internet cafes were blown up after being accused of
providing access to immorality. On the 7th of October 2007 the body of Rami Ayyad was
found in the early morning hours after he had been kidnapped days prior. Hamas officials
attended Ayyad’s funeral, condemned the murder of the Christian bookstore director and said
full investigations would be carried out. No arrests were ever made.
Despite accusations of capitulation and the rise of salafi groups that condemn the political
nature of Gaza’s new authroties, Hamas has been able to sustain a very strong support base,
especially in its strongholds in the refugee camps and urban centers. Hamas’ continued claim
429
ICG, 2008b: 7n.74.
ICG, 2008a: 9.
431
Daud Shihab cited in ICG, 2008b: 7.
432
ICG, 2008b: 2.
433
el-Sarraj, Dr Iyad, interview with author, 24. January 2008.
434
See Abu Shady quote in section I and Abu Karim in section 2.1.
435
Mostafa, interview with author, 9 July 2009. Ramallah.
436
Khalaf, interview with author, 11 January 2008. Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
430
62
to religious inspiration for its actions has so far succeeded in ascertaining its continued
widespread popularity.
3.2.3. COURTS, LAW:
"Law is the repressive aspect of the civilizing activity of state."
- Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks
After attaining power in June of 2007 Hamas responded by bypassing the existing PA courts,
issuing summary justice, sanctioned by clerics.437 Gaza City lawyer Sharhabeel el-Zaeem
responded to changes, “I don’t recognize this government, nor any of their acts,” explaining
that they have created a parallel legal system, which was creating confusion among
Palestinian lawyers.438 Some cases appeared before Hamas courts, while other didn’t.
“Society is split with law being split,” he went on, “the neck of the law has been twisted and
the division is deepening.”439 In order to gain access to Ramallah’s PA funds- which they
deemed to have rights to- the Gaza government courts charged bail of NIS1500
(approximately $400) for detainees held on suspicion of any anti-Hamas activities.440
Following the takeover all of Gaza’s 57 judges resigned, with the exception of one who is
married to a Hamas leader.441 A wide spectrum of lawyers claimed that the new courts were
discriminating on a political basis explaining, “if you are Hamas, you win; if you are Fateh,
you lose.”442
On the 24th of August the teacher’s union called a strike of its 9,000 government teachers
reacting to the new government’s re-location of teachers to different schools according to
political affiliation. The government responded by closing the union. The Gaza authorities
“temporarily” hired 4,200 new teachers and administrators hired on five-months contracts.443
Hamas accused the union of coordinating a majority of its actions with the Ramallah PA and
carried out investigations into whether teacher’s striking was based on financial or politicalthus punishable- intentions.444 Gaza’s current administration communicated to the public that
political opposition is not an option.445 Hamas has sporadically banned West Bank
newspapers from entering the Gaza Strip, especially any papers affiliated with Fateh. The
civil affairs ministry is one of the only former PA institutions that has not been taken over by
Hamas.446 This exception points to the new authority’s pragmatism as the ministry is
responsible for any coordination with Israel which Hamas wants to maintain though not under
its own jurisdiction. Accordingly, a small outpost remains on the Palestinian side of the main
pedestrian border crossing with Israel also under control of the Ramallah PA. Without their
presence Israel wouldn’t allow any international journalists, NGO employees or the few
Palestinian businessmen and patients with permits in and out of Gaza.
3.2.4. ECONOMY: Siege and its Uses
Hamas was able to deepen a lot of its power structure by capitalizing on the selective pattern
of the Israeli-Egyptian imposed siege. Meanwhile Israel deepened its trend of collective
punishment in its attempt to destroy the possibility of the formation of a unified national
consciousness- a people- while pruning the seeds of hatred planted in them. This would
437
ICG, 2008a: 12.
el-Zaeem, Sharhabeel, interview with author, 21. January 2008. Gaza City.
439
el-Zaeem, Sharhabeel, interview with author, 21. January 2008. Gaza City.
440
ICG, 2008a: 16.
441
ICG, 2008b: 10.
442
ICG, 2008b: 10n.16.
443
ICG, 2008b: 9.
444
ICG, 2008b: 9.
445
ICG, 2008b: 7.
446
ICG, 2008b: 11.
438
63
continue to legitimize the existent status quo of Israel as occupier and Hamas, as resistant and
ideologically benefiting, as occupied. Though Hamas maintained a political rhetoric of
raising attention to the political dimensions of siege, the government likewise co-opted the
humanitarian rhetoric of Israel and international NGOs in order to try to garner international
sympathy. Following Hamas’ takeover a lot of hopes were placed on the June 19th ceasefire to
generate economic revival. Though Hamas clamped down on offenders, their centripetal
legitimacy was too much at stake to make protecting the borders their primary objective.
Though Hamas’ own attacks from the Strip decreased, their punishing other’s attacks was
more an exhibition for Israel and other international players than it was effective to stop
attacks on the ground. The new government was caught in a catch 22 where they had to reveal
to the world their political will to impose cease-fire agreements with Israel, while convincing
their local constituency of their preliminary commitment to resistance until liberation. The
dilemma of juggling various planes of legitimacy- internal and external- caused the
movement, like Fateh before it, to carefully balance its rhetoric with its actions. This political
balancing act revealed Hamas’ willingness to change its core ideology of resistance when in
authority in spite of the impracticality of risking their local legitimacy. Continued siege has
enabled the new government to garner both internal support from its traditional supporters as
they remain steadfast- unlike their predecessors in recent years- against the political demands
of Israel.
Furthermore, the Gaza government utilized the limited nature of entering goods for the
profit of its own constituency. Thus, while specific former PA security forces had acted as
gatekeepers to profit from their control over Gaza’s economic border crossings with Israel,
the few goods that now entered the Strip were prioritized for Hamas’ constituency. While
many businesses profited from the shortage of stocks by raising prices of existent stocks,
Hamas affiliated businesses had better chances of obtaining the small trickle of goods
entering through the border crossings with Israel. As it had been during the era of the Fateh
controlled PA, economic elites had the most to benefit from siege and tight border crossing
regulations.447 The tunnels between the Gaza Strip and Northern Sinai provided a new source
for the government to collect taxes, causing smuggled goods prices to skyrocket. The
authorities also controlled most of the passageways thus prioritizing their imported content to
their own constituency before they reached the rest of the population.
Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations espouses that a territory is occupied when a
foreign entity exerts “effective control” over it in military and administrative matters.448 The
actual presence of the occupier inside the territory is a moot point. Israel retains control of air
space and sea access and all- but the Southern- land borders. Israel also has the right to
prevent the reopening of the airport and the building of a seaport in Gaza.449 On the 19th of
June 2007, only days after the transition of authority in the Gaza Strip the Israeli Knesset
passed a resolution that deemed the Gaza Strip a “hostile entity.” In opposition to
international law standards the Israeli administration sought to reduce its legal responsibility
for the occupied territory to a “humanitarian” one. A statement read following the cabinet
decision concluded that, "[t]he limitations will be implemented in accordance with formal
legal position papers and the humanitarian situation in the field,"450 revealed the two decisive
tropes around which Israel functioned: assumed judicial authority and humanitarianism.451
Despite the UN secretary general’s conclusion that, “[s]uch a step would be contrary to
Israel’s obligations toward the civilian population under international humanitarian and
human rights law,”452 Israel remained undeterred. In January 2008, Israel’s Supreme Court
upheld the Israeli government’s decision to deem Gaza a “hostile entity” considering the
447
See chapter 2.2.1.
Passia, June 2008: 6.
449
Revised Disengagement Plan of 6 June 2004, §3.1; §6.
450
Ravid et al, 20 September 2007.
451
Hadid, 20 June 2007.
452
Erlanger and Cooper. 20 September 2007.
448
64
action a form of “economic warfare” and an appropriate means of retaliation for rocket
attacks on Israel.453 Subsequently, the Israeli administration reduced all flows into Gaza to
what it deemed “essential” items- in order to avoid a humanitarian crisis- which included
wheat, flour, sugar, frozen meats, Israeli dairy products, rice, vegetables, fruits, cooking oil,
medicines, straw and some hygienic products.454 Banned goods include natural gas, gas,
wood, cement, clothes, shoes, soft drinks, cigarettes, computers, cars and spare parts.
Precisely these items are high on the list of imports via the tunnels from Egypt, which Hamas
has largely been able to monopolize control over. Nahed, a tunnel owner explained, "I import
everything- from men's and women's clothing, to Vespa and car parts, chocolate and
medicine, but most of all shoes."455
Figure 10: Gaza Economic Statistics, Paltrade456
Meanwhile, due to Israel’s intensified stance of closure towards the Gaza Strip and Hamas’
simultaneous inability and lack of will to normalize trade relations, border closures with Israel
reached unprecedented levels. Most significantly, Israel did not open its borders to export
from Gaza one single day the rest of the year after the 12th of June 2007. 95% of Gaza’s
industry was dependent on imported raw materials and a further 80% of factories depended
on imported machinery and maintenance parts.457 In one month at least 3,190 establishments
were closed and an estimated 65,800 employees were laid off.458 By August 2008, 98% of
Gaza’s factories lay dormant.459 5,000 farmers whose income was based on exports faced
100% losses in sales of produce like strawberries, flowers and cherry tomatoes.460 Added to
that, Israel barred vital imports like fertilizers, pesticides, sterilization gas, seeds, seedlings
and packaging materials.461
Figure 11: Imports and Exports to the Gaza Strip in 2007, Paltrade462
Hamas and Israeli policies overlapped on certain dimensions of the economic siege. Hamas’
attempt at barring Israeli fruit from entering the Gaza Strip with a plan to boycott Israeli
453
Passia, 2008: 6.
Paltrade, 2009: 14.
455
Rizk, 9 September 2008.
456
Paltrade, 12 July 2007: 3.
457
Paltrade, 12 July 2007: 3.
458
Paltrade. 12 July 2007:12.
459
ICG, 2008b: 12.
460
Paltrade, 12 July 2007: 6.
461
Paltrade, 12 July 2007: 6.
462
Paltrade, 2008: 6.
454
65
goods was short lived as Hamas businesses were affected causing its owners to quickly have
the policy overturned.463 Furthermore, certain Israeli fruit was grown specifically for sale in
Gaza and was not sale-worthy elsewhere thus the Israeli authorities ascertained its entry to the
“hostile entity” no matter what the level of siege.464 In this way both parties managed to
benefit politically and economically from the Gaza Strip’s condition as a captive market,
though Israel was the one scoring much bigger points.
On November 15th 2008 the Independent cited a leaked ICRC report that stated, “[c]hronic
malnutrition is on a steadily rising trend and micronutrient deficiencies are of great
concern."465 One year later in October 28th 2009 the Israeli human rights group Gisha released
a press statement demanding answers from the Israeli army that they never got,
“What are the criteria for defining goods as‭ ‘humanitarian‭’? ‬Is there a list of goods that are
permitted or prohibited for import into Gaza‭?” The group furthermore inquired about a
certain “Red Lines” document ‬ “which ostensibly sets the nutritional‭ ‘minimum’ ‬required for
the subsistence of the residents of the Gaza Strip and contains tables specifying the number of
grams and calories from each food group that a Gaza resident should be allowed to consume‭,
‬based on age and sex.”466 Gisha furthermore accused Israeli decision makers of ‭ "‬limit‭[ing]”‬
human beings to a‭ “‬minimum” ‬level of nutritional subsistence, a true state of exception.
Hamas for its part would not budge on its political demands thus deeming legitimate Israel’s
position in the eyes of the hegemonic “international community.” Yet Gaza’s authorities
managed to capitalize on their harsh stance of opposition by manipulating the conditions
created by the siege to their own benefit. When the Israeli authorities limited the import of
American dollars into the enclave, Gaza’s government’s access to smuggled dollars from
Egypt allowed them to benefit from higher exchange rates due to dollar shortages in Gaza’s
official money market.467 Up until the wall breach with Egypt and prior to a mass increase in
functioning tunnels with Egypt, Hamas also collected extraordinary amounts of taxes on
cigarettes smuggled from Egypt. As price- and quality- differences between Egyptian and
Israeli cigarettes were so high Gaza’s residents were still able to afford Israeli priced Egyptian
quality cigarettes without holding too large of a grudge against Gaza’s authorities. Nathan
Brown notes that Hamas “lays claim simultaneously to both Islamic ideological credentials
and valid constitutional ones, but it finances itself by taxing smuggling and vice.”468 Gaza’s
authorities furthermore established customs offices en route to the Kerem Shalom and Sofa
crossings in order to levy taxes on incoming merchandise.469
After Gaza’s new government consolidated its power in June of 2007 tunnel construction
increased drastically along the border with Egypt. By January 2008 local sources estimated
500-600 tunnels supplying an estimated 35 percent of Gaza’s goods.470 Among the diggers
who are earning higher wages than they can in any other manual labor jobs in Gaza are
university students, former office employees and farmers who can no longer profit off their
now fallow land. Bar a small percentage of tunnels that lie too close to the Israeli border East
of Rafah all tunnels are managed by the interior ministry’s Tunnel Administration, which in
some cases has records of legal contracts that refer to “underground commercial venues”
between property owners and tunnel diggers.471 Gaza’s authorities distribute lists of permitted
items, regulate prices and collect taxes on imported items- fuel is taxed in kind.472 The
463
Krieger and Lazaroff, 10 July 2007.
Leshem and Bar-Eli, 18 June 2007.
465
Macintyre, 15 November 2008.
466
Gisha, 2009b.
467
ICG, 2008a: 17n.189.
468
Brown, 2008b: 2.
469
ICG, 2008a: 17.
470
Rizk, 9 September 2008; ICG, 2008b: 14.
471
ICG, 2008b: 14.
472
ICG, 2008b: 14.
464
66
government films tunnel activity and posts overseers, who work eight-hour shifts and charge
transgressors penalties.473
The new potential for generating income has created a class of nouveaux riches, especially
among Hamas operatives. When a cease-fire in August of 2008 was frozen after a homemade
rocket was launched into Israel by unknown assailants, some Gazans accused the new tunnel
owners. One trader in Gaza City considered it “conceivable” that a tunnel owner may have
suffered from dropping prices and funded a rocket attack in order to close the crossings. After
all, for Gaza’s new primarily Hamas-affiliated bourgeoisie, “if the borders open, all his work
will come to an end.”474
Gaza’s authorities have also found other means of financing their coffers while under siege.
While the PLO-run PA had once been heavily criticized for pressuring utility bill payment
defaulters, the roles were now reversed. Once Hamas took control of municipalities a drive
for payments included the creation of “defaulter courts.”475 The old PA had turned a blind eye
to PLO affiliated defaulters’ bills, but with the tables turned, the coinciding criticism was now
aimed at the new money-collectors. A further source of government funding was vehicle
registration and licensing often overlooked by the previous authorities due to poor economic
conditions of many vehicle owners. In order to attract registrations, the government reduced
fees and provided owners of cars stolen from Israel to pay for official standard green plates,
thus legalizing their vehicles and revealing the thin line between legality and illegality.476
Today the Hamas government remains politically isolated in the Gaza Strip. The
enclave as well as the movement are under siege economically and politically as a vast
majority of "international players" reject engagement with them. Hamas for their part,
are unwilling to comply with the requirements made of it: recognizing Israel's right to
exist, the ceasing of all "violence," and recognizing all past PA agreements with Israel.
The same would never be asked of Israel's leaders and if it where, they would also never
comply. The double political standards reveal some of the political game beneath the
surface. Yet, since coming to power Hamas has significantly transformed the landscape
within the Gaza Strip, enforcing its social and political imaginary on a public that today is
still very divided about who it considers to represent them. As Dr Sarraj said, “Arabs don’t
have strong adherence (intima’) to the state. Not in Jordan or Egypt either. The state is a
foreign (ajnabeya) concept. Arabs don’t get the sense that they are a partner (shareek) in
it.” And yet, as elsewhere, the transformation that has occurred within Hamas has
implied similar trends as its predecessor. While complying to foreign imaginaries of
governance, local concerns and local representation becomes secondary.
473
ICG, 2008b: 14.
Rizk, 9 September 2008.
475
ICG, 2008a: 17.
476
ICG, 2008a: 17.
474
67
Chapter 4:
BEYOND THE NATION-STATE: SIGNPOSTS ALONG THE WAY
“The era of stateness [Staatlichkeit] is nearing its end, the State as the model of political
unity, the State as the holder of the most extraordinary of all monopolies, that is to say, of the
monopoly of political decision-making is being dethroned.”
- Carl Schmitt, Der Begriff
“Power springs up whenever people get together and act in concert,
but it derives its legitimacy from the initial getting together.”
- Hannah Arendt, On Violence
Amongst the plethora of mutilated landscapes I want to seek a moment of difference. Despite
all the scars of nation-state history, such a narrative has remained “common sense” to most
who participate in it. I will not so much make an attempt to replace such “familiar”
perceptions with what could be claimed as a worthier common sense.477 Rather, I will
highlight some signposts that reveal moments of un-staatlichkeit- where statelessness reaches
its limits and questions the intrinsic nature of the “familiar.” One such moment- demarcated
by an “act in concert”- is the first Intifada. Up until this stage I have used the Gaza Strip as
my spatial category of analysis in part to highlight the constructed nature of nation-statist
geographic categorizations. Here I will broaden my unit of analysis from the boundaries of
the “Gaza Strip,” as the Intifada reformulated the landscape of all of historic Palestine in its
wake. I will assess the legal potential for resistance opened up by the popular nature of the
uprising. Then, I will address matters of deterritorialization whereby spatial demarcations
become peripheral within globalizing trends of economic hegemony. At that juncture my
analysis will move beyond even the strict spatial entity of “Palestine.” The economic
battlefront of neo-liberalism- governed by trans-national organs- is everywhere and isn’t tied
to specific boundaries. In this trend of global governance the trope of development plays an
expansive role for the deterritorializing tendency of neo-liberal hegemony. Finally, I will
identify one further site of resistance: counter-cartography, as utilizing the methods of nationstate hegemony with the aim of undoing it.
4.1. INTIFADA: Grammar of A Multitude
“But above all, since World War II, the Palestinian voice was muffled because it always had
to pass through that manmade black hole of the Holocaust, and so it was almost never heard:
till 1987.”
- Anton Shammas, Autocartography
“The occupation officers have hit a stone, been struck
By the steadfast hardness
Of a people willing
To die on their feet
Rather than live on their knees”
- Peter Boulata, Intifada
The Intifada erupted onto the horizon of a seemingly composed Zionist occupation. Unlike
the cartographic demarcation that resulted from the Oslo process at its apex, the uprising
occupied a space of resistance that shook up the map of nation-states in its ebb. Presenting
itself as another moment that deeply reformulated the landscape of Palestine, the Intifada
placed Palestine on a map, but a different sort of map. At a time of widespread sanction of the
economics of Thatcherism and Reaganomics, the Palestinian uprising stood for opposition to
477
See Foucault on the juxtaposition of the “familiar” versus “unfamiliar” in chapter 2.1.
68
the spread of hegemony of centralization, while saying no to the unchallenged rule of an
economic bourgeoisie. While Thatcher and Reagan sought to take revolutions, resistance and
strikes off the world map, the Palestinian Intifada placed resistance dead in the center by
carving out “a particular space of resistance.”478 The adherents of neo-liberalism desired for
individuization and the isolation of the single from a collective. Far from revealing trends of a
global new order, such phenomena function in the wake of the very same nation-state logic.
During the Intifada the “public good and the collective will predominated.”479 The uprising
arose spontaneously without a centralized political decision-making process, which caught all
sides by surprise.480 The uprising was the culmination of Faisal al-Husseini's assessment, that
“[b]efore 1982, people here would sit and wait for liberation from outside. After 1982, they
started to ask what they could do to bring it about.”481
In an independence day speech Israeli president Chaim Herzog framed the Intifada as
violent “rioting” that would bring about the same results as the 1930s revolt.482 Similarly, in
the revolt of black slaves against a foreign occupation on the turn of the 18th century, the
occupiers could only describe the insurrection in terms of a “riot.”483 In both Haiti in the 18th
century and Palestine in the 20th, the colonizer was not able to recognize the possibility for
revolt, to consider the potency of such a political moment of transformation. In both sites
resistance to the familiar, thinkable tropes of colonization are deemed as a savage notion
where all actions are reduced to haphazard “rioting.” The function of naming furthermore
carries what Bourdieu entails a “quasi-magical power… to make-exist by virtue of
naming.”484 The colonizer’s monopoly on naming frames resistance as a savage act of
“rioting” in the “official” annals of history- the handmaiden of the nation-state. In Palestine
the occupier’s inability to recognize resistance in such an unfamiliar guise lead to their
assassinating Abu Jihad, accusing the Fateh co-founder of being the mastermind behind the
“revolt.”485 For the Palestinian multitude behind the Intifada the occupation’s suppressionpolitical, social and economic- was to blame.486 The centrality of this oppression as a cause
was highlighted in an Israeli authored communiqué, which was distributed as counterfeit
instructions claiming to originate from the Palestinian grassroots leadership. The message
aimed at confusing Palestinian steadfastness by claiming that Palestinians should put an end
to their resistance to Israeli oppression.487
The success of the Intifada was due partly to the widespread frustration with traditional and
centralized leadership. As well as that the occupiers knew best how to contain centralized
resistance, revealed in their assassination of Abu Jihad and their initial targeting of Jihad
Islami activists. The failure of the PLO to deal with the real needs of Palestinians everywhere
lead to the Uprising’s dispersed nature. Collective actions against the occupying force
subsequently sidestepped the usual hierarchies of command, both traditional and national as
an expression of “disgust.”488 The Jordan-Palestine Fund attempted to overturn this dispersion
of leadership with the inflow of funds for "steadfastness" (sumoud) to clan leaders and
traditional elites.489 Yet, as funds from the outside either dried up or were blocked by the
478
For Foucault “space is a metaphor for a site or container of power which usually constrains but sometimes
liberates processes of Becoming” (Harvey, 1989: 213). The Intifada is one such place. De Certeau gives the
multitude a central role in the formation of space, “[t]heir intertwined paths give their shape to spaces. They weave
places together” (Harvey, 1989: 213).
479
Said, 1996: 20.
480
Abu Amr 1093: 10; Hass, 1996; Cobban, 1990: 211.
481
Cobban, 1990: 229.
482
Swedenburg, 2003: 173.
483
Trouillot, 1995: 73.
484
Bourdieu, 1985: 730.
485
Vitullo, 1989: 50.
486
Farsoum and Landis, 1990: 22.
487
Lockman and Beinin, 1996: 386.
488
Lustick, 1993: 571ff. and Tamari cited in Lustick, 1993: 576.
489
Lustick, 1993: 576; Dajani, 1990: 36.
69
occupation, these new dynamics forced activists to become innovative, laying the ground for
dispersed nature of the Intifada.490 Such an expression of resistance placed “Palestinians” on
the map in the form of “popular sovereignties” by weaving an opposing “fabric of hegemony”
to counter that of the occupying forces.491 The Intifada leaders eventually posed a threat to the
PLO especially upon their members’ return from Tunis and the region. Over the coming years
many of these activists were co-opted into the PA’s governance structure. Other Intifada
activists subsumed their grassroots efforts into inter-statal structure of non-governmental
structures, whereby external donors would be able to tame the dispersed spirit of the uprising
through the conditionality of funding and standards of inter-national development.492
On December 8th 1987 an Israeli army truck drove into a group of Palestinian workers at the
Erez border crossing, killing four of them. The funerals attended by over 10,000 brought rise
to a pent up sensation among Palestinians living under an unrelenting occupation. The
resulting Intifada caught all parties involved by surprise. Israeli authorities reacted with an
even more intense version of repression that had been the stimulus of the uprising. A month
earlier, in October 1987 Jihad el-Islami had held a strike in response to the deaths of four of
its operatives and an announcement calling for the arrest and deportation of Jihad leader
Aouda.493 Due to the recent oppositional activity of the Islamic movement, the Israeli military
authorities immediately cracked down on the movement’s leadership all across the Gaza
Strip. Though this had a debilitating effect on el-Jihad, it did not slow the Intifada and
therefore revealed to all involved that they were not the sole driving force behind the uprising.
Abu Ammar, traveling in the Gulf at the time quickly sprang into action in order to coordinate
with the new diverse leaders on the ground. Following the first communiqué that was signed
solely by the UNLU leadership based in the occupied territories, subsequent instructional
dispatches added the PLO’s signature to the UNLU’s name as the source of the directive.494
Future communiqués claimed to speak on behalf of both the UNLU- “voice of the people”and the “voice of the PLO.”
Dr Iyad el-Sarraj, an independent Gazan physican explained, “the absence (ghiyab) of a
Palestinian nation-state in the first Intifada crystallized (balwarat) a national identity more
than any other stage before or after… the collective (jamaheeree) nature of the Intifada was
hijacked when the orders started coming from the outside [leadership], from Tunis.”495 Later
communiqués revealed arising divergences between the “inside” and the “outside.” When
Arafat appeared before the UN General Assembly with an olive branch and a gun, the UNLU
authors portrayed themselves baring the olive branch and “the sacred stone.”496 Later
disillusionment with the PLO regarding their stance on the use of violence and concessions
lead to claims that the PLO lay between “collaboration (with Israel) and concessions to the
public.”497 Especially after May 1989, the PLO leaders in Tunis were much more eager than
the locally based activists to engage in the plans set forth by the Israeli administration.498
These dynamics bring to mind Chakrabarty’s claims of “third world” national resistance
movements as a central tenet disseminating Western imaginings of governance.499 The
Intifada became collectively generated “common sense” opposing that of the PLO in exile.
This opposition to any centralized authority relayed itself further in villagers non-centralized,
490
Lustick, 1993: 575 citing Hilterman, 1991.
Farsoum and Landis, 1990: 16ff; 29.
492
See further Hanafi and Tabar, 2003.
493
Milton-Edwards, 1996: 122f.
494
See Lockman and Beinin, 1996: 327.
495
el-Sarraj, Dr Iyad, interview with author, 24. January 2008.
496
Communiqué No. 28 cited in Lockman and Beinin, 1996: 389.
497
Dajani, 1990: 35.
498
Cobban, 1990: 233.
499
Chakrabarty, 1992: 20. See more in section 2.1.
491
70
grassroots resistance to Israeli settlements, Israeli urbanization and the institutionalization of
land appropriation.500
The very makeup of the UNLU, despite its identification as the “striking arm of the PLO,”
and acting as a guiding voice to the popular uprising,501 represented a non-centralized
leadership. One example of its diffuse nature was the fact that anonymous authors from
various factions penned the communiqués- including at times non-PLO members of el-Jihad
el-Islami. The authors were in constant flux due to arrests, deportation or injury and used the
communiqués as a form of appeal (nida’) rather than command or pronouncement.502
Furthermore, there were often multiple committees coinciding writing different communiqués
with different instructions. As the authors remained anonymous, “[l]eaders were never
identified,” and “personalities were submerged in the group.”503 The loci of power being
diffuse rather than centralized meant that the grassroots committees- at the apex of the
uprising an estimated 45 thousand- did not vie for authority or legitimacy for social power,
rather formulated extra-statal structures that simply resisted.504 Israel responded by bolstering
traditional sites of power and by building centralized but weak leadership in an attempt to
blunt the edge of resistance by continuously opposing the will of the populous.505 Mirroring
their approach to labeling resistance as “rioting” here the occupation logic attempts to fit the
unfamiliar along lines of the familiar forms of organization and hierarchy. Under the lure of
being adopted into the global familiar order it is the PLO leadership that contains the
Intifada’s vibrant effectiveness at throwing off the occupation. Meanwhile, on multifarious
levels the Intifada was breaking the norms of hierarchy, governance, representation, class,
generation and gender rifts. The search for centrifugal- external- acknowledgement is simply
left out of the equation.
A further mode of non-centralization was the role of women in the Intifada who over time
broke the male-centric nature of patriarchy. The Arab Women’s Committee (AWS),
established in 1929, came to be considered the “women’s wing of the national movement”
during the uprising.506 The expansion of the role of women in the Intifada to care not only for
their nuclear family but for their “national family” lead to the overthrowing of gender norms
and helped break traditional familial and clan allegiances on behalf of a collective
identification with a broader multitude.507 Paulo Virno states that in the multitude we
“confront a concept without a history, without a lexicon,” and thus the resistance of the
Intifada remained unnamed and undeterred until the dispersal was detained by the lure of
Palestinian representation.508
This drastic shift was aided by the arrest of men and the UNLU’s endorsement of a nonconventional role of the woman throughout the uprising.509 Women acted as a central force in
500
Dajani, 1990 : 32. Following the division of occupied Palestinian territories under Oslo, areas B and C
remained completely outside of the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. Consequently, inhabitants there
looked to anyone- Palestinian, Israeli or international activists to help them in their struggle to remain steadfast on
their land.
501
Communiqué No. 28 cited in Lockman and Beinin, 1996: 387.
502
Said, 1989: 20.
503
Said, 1989: 20.
504
Dajani, 1990: 43; Swedenburg, 2003: 187; Nassar and Peacock, 1990: 199.
505
Dajani, 1990: 40. The Israeli administration emulated the British occupation’s habit of establishing or
supporting a weak and centralized leadership with the village leagues in the 1930s by backing the Islamic block as
an alternative to the PLO, then supporting the traditional leaders in the first Intifada, and finally the PA against the
growing influence of Hamas after Oslo. The British and Zionist imaginary cannot be differentiated from each other
for their underlying logic of nation-statism and colonial hegemony follow and build on the same script.
506
Peteet, 1991:45 in Swedenburg, 2003: 177.
507
Swedenburg, 2003: 187.
508
Virno, 2004: 32.
509
Usher, 1992: 38 cited in Swedenburg, 2003: 187. The Intifada’s multitude spirit was affected by Hamas when
the movement began seeking legitimacy by competing for leadership of the Intifada by reintroducing patriarchical
gender norms capitalizing on the frivolity of the Intifada period. Here the body of the woman acts as a tabula on
71
the Intifada’s drive for Palestinian economic self-dependency by running domestic food
production and farming while men were away.510 Furthermore, women sought to break
“barriers of shame” by smuggling food to isolated homes and often distributing the UNLU’s
illegal leaflets.511 Women continued in a leadership capacity despite the occupation
authorities’ unprecedented punishments of women in response to their newfound authority.512
The popular (shaebee) resistance of the Intifada entailed spontaneous actions carried out by
students, prisoners, women, shopkeepers and refugees without prior coordination.513 The
everyday forms of resistance included strikes by laborers, merchants and lawyers, commercial
shutdowns, economic boycotts, demonstrative funerals, the hoisting of banned Palestinian
flags, the resignation of tax collectors and various forms of political non-cooperation.
Alternative means of communication were utilized when phone lies were cut including the
messages of the communiqués and the use of the clandestine el-Quds radio station.514 When
the UNLU called for daylight savings time to be changed in mid April two weeks earlier than
Israel, the occupation’s very hegemony over time was undermined by the Palestinian masses.
Israeli soldiers were ordered to respond without mercy by punishing Palestinians functioning
by the resistance’s timeframe by breaking their watches and wrists.515 Meanwhile, the
inhabitants of the predominantly Christian village of Beit Sahour decided they would not
accept “taxation without representation” and refused to pay taxes. When the Israeli authorities
recognized the extent of the threat to their authority, they reacted harshly by confiscating
furniture, industrial machinery, animals, cars and IDs, ultimately imposing an additional
“Intifada tax” without which merchants would not be able to engage in any trade.516
In these ways resistance succeeded at overcoming the decisive factor of class differences.
For the first many months of the uprising the Palestinian multitude were sporadically united
in the face of a common occupier. In the absence of a national signifier who narrated a
uniform narrative, a dispersed authorship arose. Hereby every action across usual dividing
lines manifested a collective spirit of resistance. The consolidated nature of uprising would
later begin to unravel at a class level as vendors and shop owners are the first to oppose the
ongoing efforts of the UNLU.517 Yet, prior to this point the Intifada revealed a capacity to
counter what Poulantzas identified as the capitalist state’s ability to represent “itself as the
representative of the ‘general interest’ of competing and divergent economic interests which
conceal their class character from the agents.”518 In the Intifada the multitude regained their
authority to determine their own “general interest” and rejected the hegemonic claims of the
capitalist state over them.519 Herin the very exchange of representation for sovereignty is
upturned allowing the reliance on the many, rather then a single patriarhcical-coercive
power.520
which contesting national movements inscribed their brand of nationalism by imposing their respective moral
standards upon it. See also Swedenburg, 2003: 186.
510
Swedenburg, 2003: 187. When all measures of military suppression failed, the Israeli administration utilized
liberal tactics by imposing a civilian administration that entailed the appeasement of economic improvements to
oppose widespread resistance, which would find its apex in Oslo (Dajani: 1990: 41). This form of resistance,
which prioritized soil over territory, was broken by Oslo’s devotion to the opposite. “While soil is a matter of
spatialized and originary discourse of belonging, territory is concerned with integrity, surveyability, policing, and
subsistence” (See Appadurai, 1996: 46).
511
Swedenburg, 2003: 188.
512
Vitullo, 1989: 52.
513
Dajani, 1990: 30f.
514
Vitullo, 1989: 49f.
515
Nassar and Peacock, 1990: 10.
516
Dajani, 1990: 98. According to the Geneva Conventions the imposition of additional taxation in annexed areas
is illegal (Tamari, 1989: 161).
517
Bargouti, 1990: 169.
518
Poulantzas, 1968: 130-133.
519
See chapter I.II. Hobbes conception of a “people,” tied to the ideologically correlated conception of territory
immensely perpetuated the idea of nation-state.
520
Virno, 1994: 32ff.
72
The varied and widespread forms of the uprising began undoing the Israeli state-apparatus
by ending Israeli hegemony over schools, the collection of taxes, commercial traffic,
collaborators and even challenging the occupier’s domination over time.521 The
predominantly nonviolent nature of the civilian resistance formulated a political legal
exception that undermined the liberal logic of the nation-state’s claim to a monopoly on
legitimate violence.522 For though nonviolent means acted as “a means of wielding power, a
technique that is designed to fight a violent opponent willing and well equipped to wield
military force,” the uprising’s nonviolent nature also posed a legal offensive on the
occupation’s claim to legitimacy.523
The state of Israel’s determinative method provides it the upper hand in any contest vis-àvis the Palestinians- as a group, over claims of a “just” cause for the control of territory or
legitimate governance. This hierarchy is made possible by the legal fiction of the prior’s
legitimacy as a nation-state recognized within the global regime of nation-states and the
exclusion of the latter. This privileged position- buttressed by a global hegemonic club of
allies always sided with “peace”- provides the decision makers of the state of Israel with an
exceptional “right” to measure their actions on a disparate scale. In the post-cold war era
“peace” has become equivalent with the expansion of capitalist domination. “Peace” becomes
a prerequisite for the presence of global economic regimes like the IMF and World Bank to
transform landscapes. The use of violence doubles as a sanctioned tool of defense and
offense, while any act of retaliation is deemed illegitimate, unsanctioned and worthy of
punishment. In this distorted equilibrium violence from the lesser party acts as the pretext for
the disparate relationship; it becomes the trope for the ensuing state of exception.524 With
“peace” as the legitimating trope the occupier state bears the paradoxical legal sanction to
determine what is lawful and unlawful.525 The Intifada’s predominantly non-violent nature
disrupted these crooked scales, not because Palestinian violence was unsanctioned- by
international law it is legal- but by divulging the inequitable logic reinforcing the equation.526
As Iqbal Ahmad explained, a “liberation movement seeks to expose the basic contradictions
of the adversarial society.”527 The Intifada achieved this most powerfully by exposing the
inequitable sanction on use of force.
With the matter of violence out of the equation the occupation’s legitimacy was suspended
by an external public’s growing recognition of the justness of the collective uprising’s cause.
The simultaneous universalization of international law and the complete coming into being of
a “real community of states,” occurred only after decolonization had taken place.528 Or
expressed differently, “decolonization repeated imperialism, but with a new legal and moral
appearance,” which acted as a “legitimising force of colonialism.”529 These legal fictions
provided sovereign states with legitimate reasons for “the right of conquest,” by dividing the
world into “civilised and the uncivilised, permitting civilised states to occupy the
uncivilised.”530
521
Bargouti, 1990: 113.
Dajani, 1990: 67f.
523
Sharp, 1989: 4.
524
Agamben, 2005.
525
See further chapter 3.1.2.1. on “liberal peace” and the use of language of “legality.” For further reading see
Agamben, 1998: 16ff.
526
See eg. Chomsky, 2003: 221. An important distinction needs to be made here between the use of non-violence
resistance as a form of struggle and the politically motivated renouncing of violence as the PA did in Oslo.
527
Ahmad et al, 1983: 21.
528
Mohammed Bedjaoui, president of the International Court of Justice wrote, “[t]his classic international law thus
consisted of a set of rules with a geographical bias (it was a European law), a religious-ethical inspiration (it was a
Christian law), an economic motivation (it was a mercantilist law) and political aims (it was an imperialist law)”
(cited in Otto, 1996: 339).
529
Otto, 1996: 343; Strawson, 2004.
530
Strawson, 2004.
522
73
4.1.1. RESISTING LEGAL HEGEMONIES
“Law plays a constitutive role, alongside the social sciences, in defining the colonial subject
and, given the connection between knowledge and power, in legitimating dominant
distributions of power.”
- Dianne Otto, “Subalternity and International Law”
At this juncture a short excursus into the utility of the terminology of “legitimacy” and the
regime of international law that reinforces it is necessary. There are two definitions of the
term “legitimate,” which are often intentionally blurred. A more strict sense of the
“legitimate” according to international law is being “in compliance with the law.” Only those
agents that international law deems permissible to decide to resort to the use of force are
deemed “legitimate authorities.” In a broader definition of the word “legitimate” implies
“moral” or “just” irrespective of legality.531 In the case of the state of Israel’s use of force, the
imperial regime has doubled the state’s deemed moral sanction with a legal sanction. Though
in the case of Israel “[n]o one questions the use of violence in self-defense,”532 in light of the
violence that had been perpetrated against Jews in Europe, the Israeli use of vengeance
against an unarmed resistance broke even the wings of this faltering “justice.” Hannah Arendt
goes on, “[l]egitimacy, when challenged, bases itself on an appeal to the past, while
justification is related to an end that lies in the future.”533 The Intifada brought to light the fact
that the appeal to the past did not justify the ends lying in the future if the means would wage
such an extent of violence to life- human, animal and earth. The Intifada- outside of the
framework of nationalism or nation-statism- tipped the scales of the unjust nature of the
globally applied regime of political legitimacy. Gene Sharp describes the power of a
nonviolent resistance to be “designed for use against opponents who cannot be defeated by
violence.”534 In the Palestinian case Israel cannot be defeated by force not only because of the
current unequal military strength of the two contesters but primarily because of the legal
regime sanctioning the one’s actions and condemning the other to illegitimacy.
Legal scholar John Strawson describes the 1648 Peace of Westphalia- the essential claim to
legitimacy of states like Israel’s existence- as granting legal monopoly to the European
powers rather than simply establishing the doctrine of state sovereignty as such.535 Sunhya
Pahuja and Ruth Buchanan describe the effects: “[t]he terms of international “comity” then
“society” and now “community,” “effect a closure around nation [and] confirm… its
universal reach… leav[ing] no space that is not national space.”536 The widespread
recognition of the just nature of the Palestinian uprising began to deconstruct the hegemonic
nature of the global- colonial- legal regime.
Another linguistic tool utilized by the nation-state regime is the parlance of “just war.” The
principle of Just War is based on the legal record stemming from the Theological sanction of
Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas. The three main strands of their argument that
determined a war to be just included, the sanction of a “prince,” a “just cause,” and a “right
intent.”537 In contemporary legal jurisprudence the second is emphasized, the third is
downplayed while the compliance with the first is implied in the stance itself.538 In the case of
the Intifada this logical hierarchy is upturned as the prince- contemporarily identified with the
nation-state539- is sounded out, and found to lack the legal credentials vis-à-vis an uprising of
531
The previous sentences are based on Wilson, 1990: 13.
Arendt, 2003: 236ff.
533
Arendt, 2003: 241.
534
Sharp, 1989: 4.
535
Strawson, 2004: cited in Pahuja, 2005: 462.
536
Pahuja, 2005: 462; See ref chapter 2n.157.
537
Wilson, 1990: 14.
538
Wilson, 1990: 14.
539
“The idea that only a sovereign state may legitimately wage war seems a foregone conclusion in the twentieth
century. Indeed this requirement is often included in the definition of war… By the close of the nineteenth century,
532
74
a suppressed multitude. These are located in a site “outside the law” only because the law
itself is sanctioned by the very regime of political structures- the idea of nation-states- that the
multitude oppose. The power of the Intifada lies in the challenge posed to Israel’s legally
sanctioned paradox of sovereignty. Hereby the law can be enforced and at the same moment
be aufgehoben, thus Israel as sovereign simultaneously lies outside and inside the juridical
order: “law is outside itself.”540 The Intifada entails the potential seed of aufhebung of the
legal scale itself. The popular nature of the Intifada with its widespread, dispersed nature
created centripetal- local- legitimacy, while gathering global centrifugal support, thereby
undermining the usual order of things.
The strategy Israel chose to oppose this popular onslaught after violence alone was
insufficient was what colonial powers had done elsewhere: self-determination. The significant
difference is that Zionism is a settler-colonialism and thus offered only a semblance thereof.
Israeli policy makers had no intention in replacing the typical trend of decolonization with the
informal colonization of neocolonialism. The Israelis did emulate the legal dimensions of
decolonization by beginning the process of assumed self-determination with the usual aim of
breaking the sting of resistance with the temptation of “granting formal legal status to new
subjects by rendering them commensurable with its forms.”541 Yet, Israel had no interest in
conceding land and ruling from a distance, the typical form of European “decolonization.”
Just as the European colonial powers had needed “a legal system that would both regulate
relations between themselves and legitimate conquest and its consequences,” Israel now
sought justification within the global legal regime to authorize its continuous occupation.542
The occupation successfully demolished its greatest opposition by providing the lure of
recognizing the PLO with “the requirements of statehood [that] repeat the founding violence
of colonialism by inscribing it in a new legal narrative that relegitimates its imperialist
outcomes.”543 The doctrine of self-determination represented a “new legal right that frees
peoples from colonial rule, yet also sanctifies the effect of colonialism on those societies.”544
Ultimately, nationalism, secularism and self-determination provided the legal framework that
allowed for “the modernizing or civilizing ideologies par excellence.”545
In the 70s and 80s a coalition of nation-states formed with the aim of opposing the logic of
imperialism. Once decolonized nation-states had outnumbered the developed states within the
UN structure, the latter developed methods in order to retain economic hegemony. At a
meeting in Algiers in 1973 the non-aligned movement and the Group of 77- nations that
called for a more equitable economic world order- realized their attainment of national
independence had not established a “fundamental reordering of the colonialist order.”546 In
1975 the USA denied the UN General Assembly a central role in economic decision making,
maintaining such powers instead in the institutions that had resulted from the 1944 BrettonWoods gathering: the IMF, World Bank and later the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs (GATT).547 A leader of the initial G77 movement Leophold Sedar Senghor claimed
the unthinkable by upturning hegemonic “common sense” and deeming the philosophy of
Europe- and thus its hegemonic political logic- as,
“static, objective, dichotomic; it is, in fact, dualistic, in that it makes an absolute
distinction between body and soul, matter and spirit. It is founded on separation and
opposition: on analysis and conflict. The African, on the other hand, conceives the
sovereignty and the exclusive right to wage war were characteristics of State so strongly established that to suggest
otherwise would have seemed preposterous” (Wilson, 1990: 14f.).
540
Agamben, 1998: 15. Aufheben in German means both to ‘abolish’ and to ‘sublate.’ See further chapter 3.1.2.1.
541
Pahuja, 2005: 464. See also Fanon, 1963: 79.
542
Strawson, 2004.
543
Otto, 1996: 341.
544
Strawson, 2004.
545
Otto, 1996: 352.
546
Ferguson, 1987: 369.
547
For further details see Ferguson, 1987: 375ff.
75
world, beyond the diversity of its forms, as a fundamentally mobile, yet unique, reality
that seeks synthesis.”548
And yet, in the final analysis the G77 failed due to its uncritical embracing of a European
framework. The movement’s inability to disrupt the discourse of a “right to selfdetermination” and political “independence” revealed its fallacy in thought and its
acquiescence to a common legal and politico-moral fiction. Here, the legal becomes more
than simply a technology but articulates a certain social imaginary embedded in a realm of the
moral. The root of “postcolonial misery” is not “the inability to think new forms of the
modern community [or identity] but in our surrendering to old forms of the modern state.”549
II. SIGNPOSTS ALONG THE WAY
“Palestinian identity, we don’t know what it means. Abu Ammar used to be a symbol. We are
like someone in the water who is drowning and have nothing to hold onto… no one knows
what is going on. We are living dangerous days.”
- Abu Shady, Gaza City, June 2, 2007550
“[T]he national state was never as closed and as unavoidable a containereconomically, politically, or culturallyas politicians and academics have claimed since the 19th century.”
- Michel-Rolph Trouillot, The Anthropology of the State in the Age of Globalization
The crisis of the state in the Palestinian case can be primarily summed up as a failure of
centripetal-local- representation. I will delineate three strands of this crisis of representation
before moving on to their outcome: deterritorialization. The achievement of potential global
recognition that started with Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in the start of the 90s came at the
cost of Palestinians obstructing Palestinian popular resistance against the occupation. While
patterns of Palestinian resistance made the occupied unrulable, the new political elite of the
PLO took advantage of such conditions and acceded to ruling in the place of the ruler- the par
excellence colonial condition. Acting under the occupier’s jurisdiction this occupied elite
legitimated its occupier. The Intifada’s legitimacy, gained by the initial act of “getting
together” was lost in the elite’s kidnapping of “popular sovereignties.”551 The second stage,
again in order with a foreign imaginary, was the restriction of resistance to national resistance
within the paradigm of European legal consent. Hereby also, the Palestinian leadership chose
external recognition over internal representation. The third moment of centrifugality is
simultaneously the outcome of the first two. The economic integration entailed in the Oslo
process means Palestinians accede to existing in the economic periphery with Israel at the
core. The neo-liberal narrative adopted by Palestinian leadership in Ramallah seeks the
individuation of the Palestinian populous. This economic moment calls for “integration” in a
fictitious economic “community” that suddenly overcomes racial, religious, national
boundaries revealing political power as the inherent nature of the “economy.” These acts of
acquiescence entailed special economic benefits for a Palestinian political elite. It is that final
reward that Palestinian political battles are now fought over: with external recognition comes
access to certain financial benefits, resistance is forgotten en route. The desire for liberation
through resistance is replaced by visions of a “corporate peace” via negotiations.552
Accompanying the realization of the legal fictions of political structures is the
deterritorialization process brought about by global economic trends. As Akhil Gupta and
548
Otto, 1996: 347.
Chatterjee, 1993: 11.
550
Abu Shady, interview by author, June 2, 2007.
551
See also section 4.1.
552
Rabinowitz, 2000: 766.
549
76
James Ferguson argue, the experience of space has been “deterritorialized” thereby there is an
urgency to problematize the so far taken-for-granted linkage between ethnos, territory, and
state.553 By de-sanctifying the land as national-religious space we can de-sacralize the idea of
the nation-state. De-linking the tie of identity to territory challenges the potency of private
property and aims at sounding out the myth of the nation-state’s legal fixity and the utility of
territory in destroying the mutual exchange of human and land, which like Benvenisti said
would turn the “landscape into a desert of concrete and asphalt.”554 Writing “Earth-wise”
detaches “personal identity, cultural affiliation, people's sense of belonging, heritage,
solidarity” from bounded place will allow rise for the potentiality of the multitude to act
independent of a territory-bound myth.555
In one of his final interviews Edward Said opposed the abandonment of the nation-state, as
he consider this to be fulfilling the suggestions of neo-liberalism.556 This premise mistakenly
assumes the nation-state to be ordered along a different logic to neo-liberalism. Said did not
take into consideration that the adoption of the nation-state would likewise place the
Palestinian cause within the grasp of neo-liberalism. The logic of occupation, national
independence in the framework of the Oslo process and a two-state solution of the Road Map
are all premised on an economic vision for the region with Israel at its core. Hereby Israeli,
Palestinian and regional capitalist groups are set to profit from Palestine’s incorporation into a
regional political economy with promises of a “corporate peace;” the vision that excludes all
but a Palestinian elite.557
4.2.1. THE NON-SENSE OF COMMON SENSE DEVELOPMENT
“[P]olitical economy announces the unknowability for the sovereign of the totality of
economies processes and, as a consequence, the impossibility of an economic sovereignty.”
- Michel Foucault, The Foucault Effect
On 17 December 2007, at a one-day conference in Paris, over 90 representatives from various
countries and donor organizations pledged over US$7.7 billion to the Ramallah PA.558 The
conference was to garner financial support for a new PA economic strategy called the
Palestinian Reform and Development Plan for 2008-2010 (PRDP). The plan, based on
proposals written by the World Bank and other international financial institutions, has since
2007 acted as the guiding framework for West Bank economic policy. The explicitly neoliberal subplot of the PRDP calls on the PA to carry out fiscal reforms aiming at an “enabling
environment for the private sector” as the “engine of sustainable economic growth.” The plan
entails three main neo-liberal dimensions starting with calling on the PA to cut 21% of jobs40,000 people- in the public sector workforce by 2010,559 and a freeze on PA salary increases
over the next three years. Thirdly, the PA was pressured to ascertain citizens would be
required to present a “certificate of payment” for receipt of municipal or government
553
Rabinowitz, 2000: 761.
Benvenisti, 2000: 8. See also chapter 1.1.
555
Rose, 2008: 157; Rabinowitz, 2000: 761.
556
Said, 2002: 101.
557
Rabinowitz, 2000: 765f.
558
The following three paragraphs rely heavily on the analysis of Hanieh, 2008a; Hanieh, 2008b.
559
Following Hamas taking control of the Gaza Strip, the Ramallah-based PA begins mass lay-offs citing factional
disloyalty (see further chapter 2). The coinciding timing of the West Bank PA’s layoffs in Gaza with the disclosure
of a new economic program is an unlikely coincidence. Did Salam Fayyad’s cabinet use factional disloyalty as a
rationale for implementing neo-liberal reforms? If this is the case, it implies that the Ramallah PA accentuated
factional strife and acceded to international demands for non-democratic policies on behalf of economic benefits?
Hamas’ conditions for new elections in January 2010 included the re-instatement of all Hamas members fired from
the PA payroll due to political affiliation after the Hamas “takeover.” In an interview PLC chair and Hamas leader
Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi claimed Fateh had agreed to comply until a meeting with American Middle East envoy
George Mitchell disswayed the Fateh leadership (Frykberg, Mel. 1 February 2010). Such incidents again seem to
verify the overlap in external political and economic interests.
554
77
services.560 This meant the end of subsidies of electricity and water for the poorest of the
poor. All international assistance- including the $7.7 billion promised at the Paris Conferencewould be contingent on the PRDP’s implementation. To ensure compliance, the Washington
D.C.-based PRDP Trust Fund, managed by the World Bank, would receive all international
aid on behalf of the PA.
The PRDP development model will also change economic trends like the utility of cheap
Palestinian labor in industrial parks, located at the edges between the West Bank and Israel.
Twenty percent of jobs in the West Bank are planned to be tied in some way to these
industrial zones, in which Palestinian and Israeli labor laws, wage levels and environmental
policies will not apply. As the Israeli military will monitor all access to the industrial parks,
the ability to work becomes dependent upon complying with Israeli military orders. All these
plans are tied to plans for a “New Middle East” with an aim in the words of former USA
president George Bush, “to bring the Middle East into an expanding circle of opportunity, to
provide hope for the people who live in that region.”561 In this economic vision the term
“hope” implies a submission to neo-liberal policies that include privatization, free trade
agreements, cutting-back of public sectors, opening the market to foreign investment and the
removal of state subsidies.
The linkage of economic and political normalization between Arab states and Israel with
neo-liberal policies, however, most articulately came to the surface during the 1990s with the
Oslo Accords.562 A principal example of Arab state’s normalization with Israel as
precondition for economic exchange with the USA is the establishment of the Qualified
Industrial Zones (QIZ) in Jordan and Egypt. An outcome of economic agreements between
the USA, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, these zones entailed the provision that in the case of
certain proportions of Israeli inputs, the goods produced in the industrial zones would gain
duty-free status to the USA. Like the Palestinian industrial parks no labor laws apply in these
zones while workers are prevented from joining unions. The effects of these zones are the
commensuration of Israeli and Arab elites, while integrating their markets under American
economic hegemony at the cost of the exploitation of laborers.
Bush’s promise to break “[o]ld patterns of conflict in the Middle East” was tied to a
condition that, “all concerned will let go of the bitterness, hatred, and violence, and get on
with the serious work of economic development.”563 Here the terminology of “development”
reflects the modernization theory of Westernization, while highlighting the rhetoric of peace
with its monopoly on legitimizing violence. Arturo Escobar explains,
“development was not a process which involved only the material conditions of living,
the upgrading of living standards and the modernization of the productive apparatus.
More than that, development was, inevitably and perhaps more significantly, a
mechanism through which a whole rationality was to be learned…this attempt involves
higher levels of colonization.”564
Mirroring the trends of the idea of nation-state, the idea of global economic integration
according to neo-liberal dictates lures the economic elite with economic opportunity at the
cost of the working class. The created division mirrored the divide-and-conquer nature of the
nation-state. At this point in the analysis the spatial category of the Gaza Strip is subsumed in
a de-territorialized global condition. Such imperial trends make no distinction according to
560
See also Hass, 2008.
Cited in Zoellick, 2003.
562
“As Oslo unfolded, the US and other world powers sponsored a series of four consecutive summits, known as
the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Economic Summits, first held in Morocco in 1994. The Jordanian
government was not shy about promoting MENA's goal of normalization, with its Foreign Ministry openly noting
that the summits are ‘intended to create economic interdependencies between Arab states and Israel, promote
personal contacts between the two sides and foster trade, investment and development’” (Hanieh, 2008b).
563
Cited in Zoellick, 2003.
564
Escobar, 2003: 140; 167.
561
78
categories of state- or statelessness for that matter. Much like the imperial trap of
“decolonization” through the universalization of a hegemonic legal regime such economic
“reforms” perforate the landscape of the region along class lines. Robert Zoellick uttered
words with the potential of placing a seeming magical spell on the region’s economic elite,
“we are charting a new constellation: shining lights of trade and investment that offer a clear
course for countries in the region wishing to embark on a journey of economic openness and
reform.”565 The US Trade representative promised to “assist” nations “ready to embrace
economic liberty and the rule of law” to bring their economies into the “modern era.”566
Escobar questions the underlying logic,
“[i]t is a puzzling paradox, however, that at the moment when Western constructs
(philosophy, science, culture) break down or negate themselves (post-modernism,
theoretical nihilism, holism, positivism, and empiricism self-destructing as standard
epistemologies), the old Enlightenment rationality is exported to the Third World under
the banner of ‘development’… As if the Third World were perpetually condemned to
mirror the West as it was, not as it is.”567
Rejecting these condemnations is a manifestation of resistance.
4.2.2. SITE OF RESISTANCE: Doing Cartography “Other-wise”
“Throughout the history of cartography ideological ‘Holy Lands’ are frequently centered on
maps. Such centricity, a kind of “subliminal geometry,” adds geopolitical force and meaning
to representation. It is also arguable that such world maps have in turn helped to codify, to
legitimate, and to promote the world views which are prevalent in different periods and
places.”
- J. B. Harley, “Deconstructing the Map”
"History breaks up into images.”
-Walter Benjamin
Counter-cartography provides a site of resistance, where the imagination is open to postnational and counter-national cartographies. The Intifada is one such moment of a “postnational geography,” where “social activity” is re-imagining spaces.568 After all it is the
Intifada, not Oslo or the PA or “international” recognition that put the “Palestinians” on the
map: a map of resistance, a map of existence. Here the imagination must remain open for
“mapping, even realms that are yet to come.”569
In A. B. Yehoshuah’s short story “Facing the Forest” a deaf and mute forest preserve
watchman- not the expected agent of breaking silence- sets the forest he is meant to guard on
fire. The flames reveal the remains of a razed village beneath the remaining tree stumps. The
mute Arab’s story tells “history” precisely because it brings the past into the present. J. B.
Harley points out that not only is there power “exerted on cartography” but there is power
“internal to cartography, for [c]artographers manufacture power: they create a spatial
panopticon.”570 And if “catalogu[ing] the world is to appropriate it,”571 to codify it, control it
then there is potential to undo these processes of power through counter-cartography, like the
mute man exposing the centers of silencings- not so much through word, but through act.
Here to deconstruct is “to reinscribe and resituate meanings, events and objects within
broader movements and structures; it is, so to speak, to reverse the imposing tapestry in order
565
Zoellick, 2003. See further for a discussion on violence: chapter 3.1.2.1.
Zoellick, 2003.
567
Escobar, 2003: 171.
568
Bowman, 1999: 120.
569
Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 5.
570
Harley, 1989: 12f.
571
Harley, 1989: 13.
566
79
to expose in all its unglamorously dishevelled tangle the threads constituting the well-heeled
image it presents to the world.”572
“L’archipel de Palestine orientale” is a map described by its creator Julien Bousac as “an
illustration of the West Bank’s ongoing fragmentation based on the (originally temporary)
A/B/C zoning which came out of the Oslo process.”573 The “islands” divided from each other
by the Israeli controlled “sea” reveal the violence and absurdity inherent in the Zionist statebuilding project. Thus while most “cartographers are talking about their maps and not
landscapes,” such efforts at counter-cartography are an attempt to speak about landscapes, not
about maps,574 to display the “‘aporias,’ blindspots or moments of self-contradiction” lying
within state-sponsored cartography projects.575
In the project “This is Rafah” architect Pablo De Soto maps the border town of Rafah otherwise. De Soto illustrates the town’s transition from united village to divided city due to the
Egyptian-Israeli Camp David “peace” accord. By illustrating the socio-spatial effects of the
Israeli army’s razing of an entire neighborhood in 2003’s “operation rainbow” the architect
gives voice to a geographical memory that maps typically succeed at silencing. Hereby De
Soto’s efforts parallel the aims of ethnographers of memory in dismantling “the mythic Israeli
narrative.”576 The authors of a further site, “Decolonizing Architecture” recognize the events
of the past in the present while deflecting the temptation of the formulation of a counternarrative. The project’s creators use the term “decolonization” in order to,
572
Eagleton, 1986 cited in Harley, 1989: 8.
L’Archipel de Palestine Orientale.
574
Harley, 1987: 14.
575
Norris, 1987: 19 cited in Harley, 1987: 8.
576
Abu Lughod, 2007: 23.
573
80
Figure 12: L’Archipel de Palestine Orientale. By Julien Bousac
“maintain a distance from the current political terms of a “solution” to the Palestinian conflict
and its respective borders. The one-, two-, and now three-state solutions seem equally
entrapped in a “top-down” perspective, each with its own self-referential
logic. For the authors decolonization takes on an entire new meaning outside of the logic of
its legal trappings. Here, decolonization implies the dismantling of the existing dominant
structure- financial, military, and legal- conceived for the benefit of a single national-ethnic
group.”577
The author’s version of from-the-ground-up decolonization entails “large-scale
destabilizations in the world of knowledge,” as well as the exposing of silencings entailed in
state-sponsored projects and a “collapse” and “deflation of all our big stories.”578 The
577
578
“Decolonizing Architecture.”
Rose, 2008: 166.
81
jeopardizing of an order-utopia-savage triad is the realization of the limits of knowledge with
the potential to bring about the collapsing of the Western enterprise of ordering.579 Thus,
engaging in writing historiography other-wise introduces our vulnerability- we too are
complicit in the use of the tools of liberalism- and the real possibility of deflating the space
we also inhabit; destabilizing order deflates the deemed legitimacy of power of the projects
reliant on just such a trope of order.580 This very process of decolonization is itself a model of
deterritorialization as one of its key authors, a Jewish Israeli oversteps the “common sense”
proscribed boundaries, constructing solidarity across lines demarcated by enmity.581
4.2.3. (OPEN) END/ NARRATION WITHOUT STATE
“In a small portion of the school’s garden we were allowed to plant flowers and shrubs. We
were also encouraged to gather samples of wildflowers from all over the country. With the
help of friends, I collected a hundred specimens. I arranged them in a booklet, identifying
them and the areas they were from. But what names to use: Syria? Lebanon? Palestine? The
boundaries for the Middle East seemed to be changing constantly...
Even nature was victim to artificial frontiers.”
- Wadad Maqdisi Cortas, The World I Loved
“…and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old
distinction between the Same and the Other.”
- Michel Foucault, Order of Things 582
“Post-modernism” is often erroneously diagnosed as an era, an ideology that historically
superseded modernism. Yet, if such a post-modern tendency is identified with a multifarious
reaction to the modern moment- as many of its proponents claim- then such a trend breaks
with the ontological claims of progress with the allegation of bettering and replacing what
came before. Likewise, I am here not suggesting replacement or an improved version of the
state project. If “[h]istory depends on inherited plots, received cultural myths,” then I am
calling on the discipline and its internal logic to be questioned, for the “‘laws’ of historical
narration” to be interrogated and its hostile outcomes to be presented as such rather than
wonted norms of “common sense.”583
Questioning the intrinsic logic of economy and history means disrupting hegemony.584 This
process entails opposing the perpetuation of meta-narratives by not yearning to replace failing
national political programs with more of the same under the justification of being more just,
more equal or more popular. We must “push at the boundaries of modernity,” seeking to
“understand what modernity means, and develop strategies to deal with it, not to take a
countermodern position.”585 Rather, there is an urgency to explore “the transformative
possibilities at the limits of western philosophy.”586 We must work within the boundaries of
the modern, the multitude must act rather than constructing a utopia for a (utopian) people.
Here the aim is shared with what the subaltern studies program sought, “the impossible task
of excavating a presence that European thought has rendered impossible… by attempting to
579
Trouillot, 2003: 28.
Trouillot, 2003: 20.
581
Rabinowitz, 2000: 768.
582
See further chapter 2.1.
583
Hayden White in Yaeger, 1996: 4.
584
“Nation states have the capacity to enforce their truth games, and universities, their critical distance
notwithstanding, are part of the battery of institutions compliant in this process. “economics” and “history” are the
knowledge forms that correspond to the two major institutions that the rise (and later universalization) of the
bourgeois order has given to the world- the capitalist mode of production and the nation state. A Critical historian
has no choice but to negotiate this knowledge” (Chakrabarty, 1993: 19).
585
Otto, 1996: 356.
586
Otto, 1996: 356.
580
82
give voice to a social absence, which is difference itself.”587 For here is where all efforts for a
global ethic and for a global (human) “rights” code decay despite their potentially
irreproachable intentions. Their individuazing tendency- much like the universalization of the
regime of international law through decolonization- perpetuate the Westernization project by
manipulating the relationship of same and other. Here liberalism falls short by not admitting
to the need for an other, while community “denies difference by positing fusion rather than
separation as the social ideal.”588
Deborah Rose seeks to undermine the very binary of “us” and “them” that the
Westernization project is based on. Counter to both individuizing and collectivizing projects,
we are in need of the prophetic voice with the potentiality of awakening “the listener to the
proximity of the other.”589 The trend of severing one from the other is a principle requirement
in the project of collectivization, of creating groups, which requires the Other to appear as
threat on behalf of the formulation of meaning of a discursive group. A challenge poses itself
to think beyond binaries, to sound out the state’s invention of its own meanings whereby it
governs the logic that underlies all other meanings within society. We must aim at disrupting
the hegemony of the institutionalization of that “world of meanings” in an attempt at
suspending the assumptions of “common sense.”590 By un-ratifying the fetish of “common
rituals” of the commandement we may unravel the suspension of the possibility for resistance.
By questioning the conception of common sense and of the differentiation of same and other
we do not so much replace “it” with an “actual” or “true” common sense, but rather aim to
undermine the conception of what is common while opening up the analysis for difference.
The application of such a subsuming of “other in sameness,”591 is made possible in the
disruption of hegemony. Here “modernization” and “colonization” must be identified as
“weed” rather than remedy. In the act of disruption rather than turning to the past for
solutions we must consider diversity over the monocultures of modernity/hegemony/neoliberalism/nation-statism. James Scott highlights the resilience of diversity, pointing out that
“polyculture is a more stable, more easily sustainable form of agriculture than
monocropping.”592 The early days of the G77 represented a moment of such polyculture by
championing solidarity and attempting to oppose the centralization of the economic decisionmaking process since Bretton Woods.593 A further possibility for thinking a polyculture of
resistance appears in Guittari and Deleuze’s description of the “rhizome” over and against the
linear Western “arborescent” model. In “A Thousand Plateaus” they describe the rhizome as
bringing,
“into play very different regimes of signs, and even nonsign states... It is composed not
of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor
end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills. The
rhizome is an antigenealogy... the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced,
constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and
has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. It is tracings that must be
put on the map, not the opposite. In contrast to centered (even polycentric) systems
with hierarchical modes of communication and preestablished paths, the rhizome is an
acentered, nonhierarchical, nonsignifying system without a General and without an
organizing memory or central automaton, defined solely by a circulation of states.”594
587
Otto, 1996: 353-4.
Otto, 1996: 357.
589
Susan Handelman cited in Rose, 2007: 165.
590
Mbembe 2001: 103f.
591
Trouillot, 2003: 28. Trouillot here echos Emanuel Levinas, “The ontological event accomplished by philosophy
consists in suppressing or transmuting the alterity of all that is Other, in universalizing the immanence of the Same
(la meme) or of Freedom, in effacing the boundaries, and in expelling the violence of Being (Etre)” (Levinas,
1996: 11).
592
Scott, 1998: 281.
593
Ferguson, 1987.
594
Deleuze and Guittari, 1987: 21.
588
83
Israel deemed Palestinians state-less and voice-less, without the ability to speak. According
to Anton Shammas the conflict is precisely about speech, not about the identity of the
speakers.595 The dispute in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is about the power to determine who
has a claim to speak in a struggle of epistemic ambition of declaring the frontiers of the
sacred and profane- a struggle over power vis-à-vis fields of cultural and ideological
production.596 Whitelam suggests that, “if Palestinian history is to be freed from the
constraints of biblical studies, which it must have if it is to have a voice, it will need to create
its own space or contest the current spaces available.”597 Such rhizomatic spaces were created
in the first Intifada until the movement was halted by a Palestinian elite driven by a lure for
recognition in the “common sense” of non-sense. Today the contest of representation has
expanded beyond the Oslo elite and threatens to implode. Moments of resistance must be
celebrated and perpetuated so that the cacophony of Intifada may live on and multiply. A
resistance that is perpetually liminal, that creates spaces, not space, a multiplicity of voices,
rather than a dominating voice of the symbol is what occupation, imperialism and neo-liberal
hegemony fear most. A politico-territorial entity’s construction of walls all around it signifies
that it has reached an impasse regarding solutions to sharing life with an other. One hundred
years ago not one nation-state container existed on the political horizon. We must permit our
imagination to think the unthinkable- not unlike like the first visionaries of national states.
The impasse of a Palestinian nation-state provides the ideal opportunity for manifesting a
radically different imaginary.
595
Shammas cited in Peteet, 2005: 162n. 21.
Bourdieu, 1985: 735.
597
Whitlam, 1996: 236.
596
84
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abdel-Rahman, Ahmed. 2000. “Istishraf al-mustaqbal- fatah.” In Khibrat al-haraka al-seyaseyya alfilisteeneyya fi al-qarn al-ashreen. Gaza City: National Center for Studies and
Documentation. Pp. 514- 534.
Abed, George. 1999. “Beyond Oslo: A Viable Future For The Palestinian Economy.” Research in
Middle East Economics 3: 25-58.
Amayreh, Khaled. 21- 27 May 2009. “Not Better But Worse.” Al-Ahram Weekly.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/948/re4.htm Accessed 3 February 2010.
Abo Toameh. 28 June 2007. “Fatah, in Disarray, Torn by Mutual Recriminations.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183053061583&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle
%2FShowFull Accessed 12 December 2008.
Abo Toameh. 22 January 2006. “US Investing in PA Image Before Vote.” Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1137605883065&pagename=JPost
%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull Accessed 12 December 2008.
Abrams, Philip. 1988. “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State.” Journal of Historical Sociology
1 (1): 58-89.
Abu Amr, Ziad. 1990. “The Politics of the Intifada.” In Palestinians: New Directions Michael Hudson
(ed.). Washington D.C.: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Pp. 3- 24.
Abu Amr, Ziad. 1993. “Hamas: A Historical and Political Background,” Journal of Palestine Studies
22 (4): 5-19.
Abu El-Haj, Nadia. 2001. Facts On the Ground. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ahmad, Eqbal and Paul, Jim and Stork, Joe. 1983. “Yasser Arafat's Nightmare.” MERIP Reports 119:
18-23.
Alsharq Al-Awsat. 10 July 2007. “Hamas: Al-Qaeda Hasn't Infiltrated Gaza.”
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=9522 Accessed 10 December 2009.
The American Taskforce on Palestine. “About Us.”
http://www.americantaskforce.org/about_us Accessed December 11, 2008.
Arendt, Hannah. 2003. “From On Violence.” In Violence in War and Peace: An Anthology, ScheperHughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Philippe (eds.). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Pp. 236- 243.
Associated Press. 19 June 2007. “Carter: Stop favoring Fateh over Hamas.” Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1181813074587&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Sho
wFull Accessed 12 December 2008.
Anderson, Benedict. 2003. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.
Abu-Lughod, Ibrahim. 1990. “Introduction: On Achieving Independence.” In Intifada: Palestine at
the Crossroads. Nassar, Jamal and Peacock, Roger (eds.). New York: Praeger. Pp. 1- 14.
Abu Lughod, Ibrahim et al (eds.). 1999. The Landscape of Palestine: Equivocal Poetry. Birzeit:
Birzeit University Publications.
Abu-Lughod, Lila and Sa'id, Ahmad (eds.). 2007. Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Anghie, Antony. 1999. “Francisco De Vitoria and the Colonial Origins of International Law.” In Laws
of the Postcolonial. Darian-Smith, Eve and Fitzpatrick, Peter (eds.). Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan. Pp. 89- 107.
Anthias, Floya and Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1993. Racialized Boundaries. London: Routledge.
Al-Ghazali, Sa’id. 1998. “Islamic Movement versus National Liberation.” Journal of Palestine
Studies 17 (2): 176-180.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Public
Culture 2: 1-23.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. “Sovereignty Without Territoriality.” In The Geography of Identity. Yaeger,
Patricia (ed.). Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Pp. 40- 58.
85
Baroud, Ramzy. 15- 21 February 2007. “Expecting Mecca.” Al-Ahram Weekly.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/832/op6.htm Accessed 12 December 2008.
Baumgarten, Helga. 1990. “‘Discontented People’ and ‘Outside Agitators’: The PLO in the
Palestinian Uprising.” In Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads. Nassar, Jamal and Peacock,
Roger (eds.). New York: Praeger. Pp. 207- 228.
Baumgarten, Helga. 2005. “The Three Faces/Phases of Palestinian Nationalism, 1948-2005.” Journal
of Palestine Studies 34 (4): 25-48.
Baumann, Melissa. 1989. “Gaza Diary.” In Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli
Occupation, Lockman, Zachary and Beinin, Joel (eds.). Boston: South End Press. Pp. 57- 66.
Bayat, Assef. 1990. “Shariati and Marx: A Critique of an ‘Islamic’ Critique of Marxism.” Alif:
Journal of Comparative Poetics 10: 19-41.
Bargouti, Jameel. 1990. “Jeep Versus Bare Feet: The Village in the Intifada.” In Intifada: Palestine at
the Crossroads, Nassar, Jamal and Peacock, Roger (eds.). New York: Praeger. Pp. 73- 90.
Bayart, Jean Francois and Hibou, Beatrice and Ellis, Stephen. 1999. The Criminalization of the State
in Africa. Oxford: International African Institute.
BBC. 19 June 2007. “US, Israel Vow to Support Abbas.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6766551.stm
Accessed 8 February 2010.
BBC. 25 May 2009. “Medical Aid Convoy Stranded on Gaza Border.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8067081.stm Accessed 4 February 2010.
Bhabha, Homi. 1987. “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse.” In October:
The First Decade, 1976- 1986, Michelson, Annette et al (eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Pp. 317- 325.
Bhabha, Homi (ed.). 1990. Nation and Narration. New York: Routledge.
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. “Dissemination.” In The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Pp. 139-70.
Bhabha, Homi. 1999. “Remembering Fanon: Self, Psyche, and the Colonial Condition.” In Rethinking
Fanon: The Continuing Dialogue. Nigel Gibson (ed.). New York: Prometheus Books. Pp.
179- 196.
Bitar, Maher. 2008. “Unprotected Among Brothers: Palestinians in the Arab World January.” Refugee
Studies Center University of Oxford. Working Paper 44: 2-30.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. “The Social Space And the Genesis of Groups.” Social Science Information
24: 195-220.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. “Rethinking the State.” In Practical Reason. Stanford: University of Stanford
Press. Pp. 35-63.
Bowman, Glenn. 1994. “‘A Country of Words’: Conceiving the Palestinian Nation from the Position
of Exile.” In The Making of Political Identities. Laclau, Ernesto (ed.). London: Verso. Pp.
138-70.
Bowman, Glenn. 1999. “The Exilic Imagination. The Construction of the Landscape of Palestine from
its Outside.” In The Landscape of Palestine: Equivocal Poetry. Abu Lughod, Ibrahim et al
(eds.). Birzeit: Birzeit University Publications. Pp. 53- 78.
Bowman, Glenn. 2002. “‘Migrant Labour’: Constructing Homeland in the Exilic Imagination.”
Anthropological Theory 2 (4): 447-468.
Bowman, Glenn. 2003. “Constitutive Violence and the Nationalist Imaginary: Antagonism and
Defensive Solidarity in ‘Palestine’ and ‘former Yugoslavia.” Social Anthropology 11 (3):
319–340.
Benvenisti, Eyal. 1993. The International Law of Occupation. New Jersey: Princeton University
Press.
Benvenisti, Meron. 2000. Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Hold Land Since 1948.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brown, L. Carl. 2000. Religion and State. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brown, Nathan. 2003. Palestinian Politics After the Oslo Accords. Berkley: University of California
Press.
86
Brown, Nathan. 2007a. “The Peace Process Has No Clothes.” Carnegie Endowment. 15 June.
www.carnegieendowment.org/files/BrownCommentaryjune072.pdf Accessed 8 February
2010.
Brown, Nathan. 2007b. “What Can Abu Mazin Do?” Carnegie Endowment. 15 June.
www.carnegieendowment.org/files/abumazinupdatejune1507.pdf Accessed 8 February 2010.
Brown, Nathan. 2008. “Hamas in Power.” Carnegie Endowment.
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/arb/?fa=show&article=20916 Accessed 8 February 2010.
Brown, Nathan. 2008b. “The Road Out of Gaza.” Carnegie Endowment.
www.carnegieendowment.org/files/brown_gaza_final.pdf Accessed 8 February 2010.
Brynen, Rex. 1995a. “The Dynamics of Palestinian Elite Formation.” Journal of Palestine Studies 24
(3): 31-43.
Brynen, Rex. 1995b. “The Neopatrimonial Dimension of Palestinian Politics.” Journal of Palestine
Studies 25 (1): 23-36.
B’tselem. 2002. “Land Grab: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank.”
www.btselem.org/English/.../200205_Land_Grab.asp Accessed 1 February 2010.
Cesaire, Aime. 1972. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Chatterjee, Partha. 1997. “Beyond the Nation? Or Within?” Economic and Political Weekly 32 (1/2):
30-34.
Chomsky, Noam. 1983. The Fateful Triangle. The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Boston:
South End Press.
Chomsky, Noam. 2003. “The New War Against Terror: Responding to 9/11.” In Violence in War and
Peace: An Anthology, Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Bourgois, Philippe (eds.). Malden: WileyBlackwell. Pp. 217- 223.
Caldeira, Teresa. 2001. City of Walls: Crime, Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paulo. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Campbell, David. 2004. “Construction Site: Architecture And Politics In Israel/Palestine.”
Theory and Event 7 (4).
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1992. “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’
Pasts?” Representations 37: 1-26.
Cobban, Helena. 1984. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power, and Politics.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cobban, Helena. 1990. “The PLO and the ‘Intifada.’” Middle East Journal 44 (2): 207- 233.
Cohen, David William. 1994. The Combing of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Conflicts Forum. 8 October 2007. “Closing NGOs Underming Abu Mazen Government.”
http://conflictsforum.org/2007/closing-ngos-underming-abu-mazen-government/ Accessed 4
February 2010.
Cook, Jonathan. 13 September 2008. “Israel's Dark Art of Ensnaring Palestinian Collaborators.”
Antiwar.
http://www.antiwar.com/cook/?articleid=13450 Accessed 6 October 2009.
Cortas, Wadad Makdisi. 2009. A World I Loved. New York: Nation Books.
Crooke, Alastair. 28 June 2007. “Our Second Biggest Mistake in the Middle East.” London Review of
Books.
http://conflictsforum.org/2007/our-second-biggest-mistake-in-the-middle-east/ Accessed 8
December 2008.
Dajani, Souad. 1990. The Intifada. Amman: Centre for Hebraic Studies, University of Jordan.
Dajani, Souad. 1994. Eyes Without Country: Searching for a Palestinian Strategy of Liberation.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Das, Veena. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Davis, Uri. 1997. Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel,
Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Reading: Ithaca Press.
87
“Decolonizing Architecture.”
http://www.decolonizing.ps Accessed 23 May 2009.
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
De Soto, Alvaro. 2007. “End of Mission Report.” May. Leaked Report. Guardian.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf
Accessed 3 February 2010.
Duffield, Mark. 2001. Global Governance and the New Wars. New York: Zed Books.
Eid, Haider. 2007. “Representations of Oslo Intelligentsia: A Fanonian Reading of the Intellectual
Landscape in Post-Oslo Palestine.” Nebula 4 (2): 96- 106.
Eid, Haider. 2008. “The Zionist-Palestinian Conflict: An Alternative Story.” Nebula 5 (3): 122- 139.
Entous, Adam. 7 March 2007. “Goods Trickle Through Gaza Crossing, But at a Price.”
Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL05273274 Accessed 15 January 2010.
Elmer, John. 17 November 2009. “U.S. Takes Aim Over Jordan's Shoulder.” IPS News.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49292 Accessed 17. November 2009.
Escobar, Arturo. 2005. “Economics and The Space of Modernity: Tales of Market, Production and
Labour.” Cultural Studies 19 (2): 139- 175.
Esmeir, Samera. 2007. “Memories of Conquest: Witnessing Death in Tantura.” In Nakba: Palestine,
1948, and the Claims of Memory, Abu-Lughod, Lila and Sa'id, Ahmad (eds.). New York,
Columbia University Press. Pp. 229- 252.
Erlanger, Steven and Kershner, Isabel. 13 June 2007. “Attacks Escalate as Palestinians Fight for
Power.” New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2007/06/13/world/middleeast/13mideast.html
Accessed 8 February 2010.
Erlanger, Steven and Cooper, Helene. 20 September 2007. “Israel Pressures Hamas Ahead of Rice’s
Arrival.” New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/world/middleeast/20mideast.html Accessed 27.
December 2009.
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Other. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Fabian, Johannes. 2003. “Forgetful Remembering: A Colonial Life in the Congo.”
Africa Today 73 (4): 489-504.
Fanon, Frantz. 1991. The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin.
Farsakh, Leila. 2000. “Under Siege: Closure, Separation and the Palestinian Economy.”
Middle East Report 217: 22-25
Farsakh, Leila. 2005. “Independence, Cantons, or Bantustans: Whither the Palestinian State?” Middle
East Journal 59 (2): 230-245.
Farsoum, Samih and Landis, Jean. 1990. “The Sociology of An Uprising: The Roots of the Intifada.”
In Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, Nassar, Jamal and Peacock, Roger (eds.). New York:
Praeger. Pp. 15- 36.
Feldman, Ilana. 2008a. Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and the Work of Rule (1917-1967).
Durham: Duke University Press.
Feldman, Ilana. 2008b. “Waiting for Gaza: Refract Citizenship and Latent Sovereignty in Gaza.”
Citizen Studies 12 (5): 447- 463.
Ferguson, Clarence. 1987. “Redressing Global Injustices: The Role of Law.” In Third World Attitudes
Towards International Law Snyder, Frederick and Sathirathai, Surakiart (eds.). Dordrecht:
Martinus Nijhoff. Pp. 369- 377.
Ferguson, James and Gupta, Akil. 2002. “Spatializing States: Towards an Ethnography of Neoliberal
Governmentality.” American Ethnologist 29(4): 981-1002.
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York:
Pantheon Books.
Foucault, Michel. 1984. “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias.” Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité.
October.
88
Foucault, Michel. 1994. “Proper Use of Criminals.” In Power. Paul Rabinow (ed.). New York: The
New Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1994. “Governmentality.” In Power. Paul Rabinow (ed.). New York: The New
Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Vintage.
Foucault, Michel. 2007. Life and Words: Violence and Descent into the Ordinary. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Frisch, Hillel. 1997. “Modern Absolutist or Neopatriarchal State Building? Custom Law, Extended
Families, And the Palestinian Authority.” International Middle East Studies 29: 341-358.
Frykberg, Mel. 1 February 2010. “Hamas Parliamentarian: "We Accept Existence of Israel Within
1967 Borders.” The Electronic Intifada. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11046.shtml
Accessed 4 February 2010.
Gaess, Roger. 2002. “Interviews From Gaza: What Hamas Wants.” Middle East Policy 9 (4): 102121.
Gellner, Ernest. 1997. Nationalism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
Gisha. 2007. “Disengaged Occupiers: The Legal Status of Gaza,” January.
www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/Report%20for%20the%20website.pdf Accessed 8 February
2010.
Gisha. 2007b. “Commercial Closure: Deleting Gaza’s Economy from the Map,” July.
www.gisha.org/.../Formatted-Deleting%20Gaza%20Economy%20from%20the%20Map.doc
Accessed 8 February 2010.
Gisha. 2009. “Petition Under the Freedom of Information Act: Lack of Public Oversight.”
http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1618&intSiteSN=113 Accessed
8 February 2010.
Gisha. 2009b. “Raises Questions of Corruption‭, ‬Impropriety in Transfer of Goods to Gaza‭.‬” 28
‬October. http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1618&intSiteSN=113
Accessed 9 November 2009.
Al Ghazali, Sa'id. 1988. “Islamic Movement versus National Liberation.” Journal of Palestine Studies
17 (2): 176-180.
Gordon, Neve. 2002. “Outsourcing Violations: The Israeli Case.” Journal of Human Rights 1 (3):
321–337.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks Quintin Hoare (ed.). London: Lawrence and
Wishart (1971).
Gregory, Derek. 2004. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Malden: Blackwell
Publications.
Gregory, Derek. 2004a. “Palestine Under Siege.” Antipode 36: 601-606.
Gerber, Haim. 1998. “‘Palestine’ and Other Territorial Concepts in the 17th Century.” International
Journal of Middle East Studies 30 (4): 563-572.
Greenstein, Ran. 1995. Genealogy of Conflict, Class, Identity and State in Palestine/ Israel and South
Africa. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press.
Guardian. “Gaza on Brink of Implosion as Aid Cut-off Starts to Bite.” 16 April 2006.
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/apr/16/israel Accessed 12 December 2008.
Guha, Ranajit and Spivak, Gayatri (eds.). 1988. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Gunning, Jeroen. 2008. Hamas in Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Haaretz Service and News Agencies. 21 June 2007. “Abbas: No Dialogue with ‘Murderous
Terrorists’ in Hamas.” www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873266.html Accessed 9 February
2010.
Haaretz, 10 July 2007. “Hamas Supporting Al-Qaida in Gaza, Fatah will Not Negotiate.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/880060.html Accessed 10 December 2009.
Halabi, Usama and Harlow, Barbara. 1995. "There is Not Even a Basic Understanding about What
Laws Apply Where." Middle East Report 194/195: 33-34.
89
Hall, Stuart. 1996. “When Was the ‘The Post-Colonial’? Thinking At the Limit.” In The PostColonial Question, Common Skies, Divided Horizons. Chambers, Ian and Curti, Lidia (eds.).
New York: Routledge.
Hamdy, Iman. 2008. “Israel and the Palestine Question.” Presentation at the American University in
Cairo. 25 March.
Hamas. 1988. “The Charter of Allah: The Platform of the Islamic Resistance Movement.”
www.palestinecenter.org/cpap/documents/charter.html Accessed 31 January 2010.
Hanafi, Sari. 2006. “Spaciocide.” In City of Collision: Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict
Urbanism. Misselwitz, Philipp and Rieniets, Tim (eds.). Basil: Birkhäuser Publishers of
Architecturs.
Hanafi, Sari (ed.). 2008. Crossing Borders, Shifting Boundaries: Palestinian Dilemmas. Cairo:
American University in Cairo Press.
Hanafi, Sari and Tabar, Linda. 2003. “The Intifada and the Aid Industry: The Impact of the New
Liberal Agenda on the Palestinian NGOs.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the
Middle East 23: 1& 2: 205- 214.
Hanieh, Adam. “Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power Part 1, 2”
19 July 2008a.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hanieh190708a.html Accessed 12 October 2009
19 July 2008b
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/hanieh190708b.html Accessed 12 October 2009.
Handler, Richard. 1988. Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press.
Handler, Richard. 1991. “Who Owns the Past? History, Cultural Property, and the Logic of
Possessive Individualism." In The Politics of Culture Williams, B. (ed.). Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution. Pp. 63-74.
Handler, Richard and Segal, Daniel. 1992. “How European is Nationalism?” Journal of Cultural and
Social Practice 23: 1-15.
Halbwachs, Maurice. 1992. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hajjar, Lisa. 2004. “Torture And The Future.” Middle East Report. 11 January.
www.merip.org/mero/interventions/hajjar_interv.html Accessed 10 February 2010.
Hajjar, Lisa. 2005. Courting Conflict: the Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Harley, J. B. 1989. “Deconstructing the Map.” Cartographica 26 (2): 1-20.
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of the Postmodern. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harvey, David. 2007. A Brief History of Neo-liberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hass, Amira. 1996. Drinking the Sea At Gaza. New York: Own Books.
Hass, Amira. 2 June 2008. “Democratic Suspicion.” Haaretz. .
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/951534.html Accessed 16 January 2010.
Held, David. 1983. “Introduction: Central Perspectives on the Modern State.” In States and Societies.
Held, David et al (eds.). Oxford: Martin Robertson.
Herzallah, Mohamed. 2 July 2009. “Why Obama Should Fire General Dayton.” The Electronic
Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10639.shtml Accessed 31 January 29, 2010.
Hilal, Jamil. 1998. “The Effect of the Oslo Agreement on the Palestinian Political System.” In After
Oslo- New Realities, Old Problems. Giacaman, George, and Lonning, Dag Jorund (eds.).
London: Pluto Press. Pp. 146- 161.
Hill, Jonathan. 2005. “Beyond The Other: A Postcolonial Critique of The Failed State Thesis.”
African Identities 3: 139-154.
Hroub, Khaled. 2002. Hamas: Political Thought and Practice. Washington D.C.: Institute for
Palestine Studies.
Hroub, Khaled. 2004. “Hamas after Shaykh Yasin and Rantisi.” Journal of Palestine Studies 33 (4):
21-38.
90
Human Rights Watch. 17 October 2004. “Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip.”
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2004/10/17/razing-rafah
Ibn Khaldoun. 1987. An Arab Philosophy of History. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.
International Crisis Group. 2007. “Inside Gaza: The Challenge of Clans and Families.” Middle East
Report N°71. Gaza City/Ramallah/Brussels. 20 December.
International Crisis Group. 2008a. “Ruling Palestine I: Gaza Under Hamas.” Middle East Report.
N°73. Gaza City/Ramallah/Brussels. 19 March.
International Crisis Group. 2008b. “Round Two In Gaza. Middle East Briefing.” N°24. Gaza
City/Ramallah/Brussels. 11 September.
“Israel- PLO Declaration of Principles.” Journal for Palestine Studies 23 (1): 115-21.
“Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” 1995. Ramallah: Palestine
Liberation Organization, Department of Negotiations Affairs.
Israel’s Security Fence. Israeli Ministry of Defense.
http://www.securityfence.mod.gov.il/pages/ENG/route.htm Accessed 2 February 2010.
Issacharoff, Avi and Haaretz Service and The Associated Press. 20 June 2007. “Militants fire 5
Qassams at Western Negev, Three People Wounded.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873074.html Accessed 9 February 2010.
Jarbawi, Ali. 2001. “Critical Reflections on One Year of the Intifada.” Between the Lines 1 (12).
Jean-Klein, Iris. 2001. “Nationalism and Resistance: The Two Faces of Everyday Activism in
Palestine during the Intifada.” Cultural Anthropology 16 (1): 83-126.
Jerusalem Post. 19 November 2008. “Netanyahu Vows Rapid Palestinian Economic Growth.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=12
26404780901 Accessed 12 December 2008.
Juergensmeyer, Mark. 1993. The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism confronts the Secular State.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Karon, Tony. 16 May 2007. “Palestinian Pinochet Making His Move?” Rootless Cosmopolitan.
http://tonykaron.com/2007/05/15/palestinian-pinochet-making-his-move/ Accessed 12
December 2008.
Kagan, Michael. “Restitution as a Remedy to Property Claims in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
Florida Journal of International Law 14 (2): 421- 489.
Khalidi, Rashid. 1991. “Arab Nationalism: Historic Problems in the Literature.” The American
Historical Review 96 (5): 1363-1373.
Khalidi, Rashid. 1997. Palestinian Identity. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kibble, Steve. 2001. “Somaliland: Surviving Without Recognition; Somalia: Recognised but
Failing?” International Relations 15 (5): 5-25.
Kierkegaard, Soren. 1985. Fear and Trembling: Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de Silentio. London:
Penguin Books.
Kilminster, Richard. 1979. Praxis and Method: a Sociological Dialogue with Lukács, Gramsci and
the Early Frankfurt School. New York: Routledge.
Kimmerling, Baruch and Migdal, Joel. 1993. The Palestinian People. New York: The Free Press.
Klein, Menachem. 1997. “Quo Vadis? Palestinian Authority Building Dilemmas since 1993.” Middle
East Studies 33 (2): 383-404.
Klein, Menachem. 1997b. “Competing Brothers: The Web of Hamas-PLO Relations.” In Religious
Radicalism in the Greater Middle East Maddy-Weitzman, Bruce and Inbar, Efraim (eds.).
New York: Routledge.
Koury, Philip. 1997. “The Paradoxical in Arab Nationalism: Interwar Syria Revisited.” In Rethinking
Nationalism in the Arab Middle East Jankowski, James and Gershoni, Israel (eds.). New
York: Columbia University Press.
Krieger, Matthew and Lazaroff, Tovah. 10 July 2007. “Hamas Bans Israeli Produce in Gaza.”
Jerusalem Post.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1183980036217&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle
%2FShowFull Accessed 29 December 2009.
91
Kristianasen, Wendy. 1999. “Challenge and Counterchallenge: Hamas's Response to Oslo.” Journal
of Palestine Studies 28 (3): 19-36.
Kurz, Anat. 2005. Fatah and the Politics of Violence: The Institutionalization of a Popular Struggle.
Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
L’Archipel de Palestine Orientale.
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/270-palestines-island-paradise-now-with-aword-from-its-creator/ Accessed 23 May 2009.
La Ramee, Pierre and Polakoff, Erika. 1997. “The Evolution of the popular organizations in
Nicaragua.” In The Undermining of the Sandinista Revolution Prevost, Gary and Vanden.
Harry (eds.). London: Macmillian Press. Pp. 114- 140.
Lieven, Anatol. 23 July 2006. “Democracy’ Flopped. Now What?” LA Times.
http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/23/opinion/op-lieven23 Accessed December 12, 2008.
Leshem, Guy and Bar-Eli, Avi. 18 June 2007. “Jordan to transfer 450 tons of food, medical supplies
to Gaza.” Haaretz.
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/872194.html Accessed 29 December 2009.
Lesch, Ann. 1985. “Gaza: Forgotten Corner of Palestine.” Journal of Palestine Studies 15 (1): 43-61.
Leshem, Guy and Bar-Eli, Avi. 18 June 2007. “Jordan to Transfer 450 Tons of Food, Medical
Supplies to Gaza.” Haaretz. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/872194.html Accessed 4
February 2010.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Li, Darryl. 2006. “The Gaza Strip As Laboratory: Notes in the Wake of Disengagement.” Journal of
Palestine Studies 35 (2): 38–55.
Lockman, Zachary. 1996. Comrades and Enemies. Berkley: California University Press.
Lockman, Zachary and Beinin, Joel (eds.). 1989. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli
Occupation. Boston: South End Press.
Locke, Richard and Stewart, Anthony. 1985. Bantustan Gaza. London: Zed Books. 1985.
Laclau, Ernest and Mouffe, Chantal. 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical
Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Lagerquist, Peter. 2003. “Privatizing the Occupation: The Political Economy of an Oslo Development
Project.” Journal of Palestine Studies 32 (2): 5-20.
Laub, Karin. 11 December 2007. “IMF: Palestinian Reform Plan Doable.” Associated Press.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/11/AR2007121100236.html
Accessed 16 January 2010.
Levinas, Emanuel. 1996. Basic Philosophical Writings. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Levine, Mark. 1999. From Bride of the Sea To Disneyland: The Role of the Architecture In the Battle
for Tel Aviv’s “Arab Neighborhood.” In The Landscape of Palestine: Equivocal Poetry Abu
Lughod et al (eds.). Birzeit: Birzeit University Press. Pp. 107-121.
Levine, Mark. 2005. Overthrowing Geography: Tel Aviv, Jaffa and the Struggle for Palestine.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lustick, Ian. 1993. “Writing the Intifada: Collective Action in the Occupied Territories.” World
Politics 45 (4): 560-594.
Lybarger, Loren. 2007. Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle Between Islamism and
Secularism in the Occupied Territories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Macintyre, Donald. 15 November 2008. “Chronic Malnutrition in Gaza Blamed on Israel.” The
Independent.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/chronic-malnutrition-in-gaza-blamedon-israel-1019521.html Accessed 27 December 2009.
Malkki, Liisa. 1994. “Citizens of Humanity: Internationalism and the Imagined Community of
Nations.” Diaspora 3 (1): 41-68.
Malkki, Liisa. 1995. Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology Among Hutu
Refugees in Tanzania. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Marx, Karl. 1963. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. New York: International Publishers.
92
Massad, Joseph. 1995. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism.” Middle East
Journal 49 (3): 467-483.
Massad, Joseph. 2001. Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Massad, Joseph. 2006. The Persistence of the Palestinian Question. New York: Routledge.
Massad, Joseph. 2000. “Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?” Journal of
Palestine Studies 30: 52-67.
Massad, Joseph. 2010. “How Surrendering Palestinian Rights Became the Language of ‘Peace.’” The
Electronic Intifada. January 27 2010.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11034.shtml Accessed 27 January 2010.
Matar, Nabil. 1999. “Renaissance Cartography and the Question of Palestine.” In The Landscape of
Palestine: Equivocal Poetry Abu Lughod et al (eds.) Birzeit: Birzeit University Press. Pp.
139- 152.
Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Mbembe, Achille. 2002. “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits.” In Refiguring the Archive.
Hamilton, C. (ed). Cape Town: David Philip. Pp. 19-26.
Mbembe, Achille. 2003. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40.
Missing Links. 2 May 2007. “Unified Explanation of the American Scheme for Palestine, c February
2007.”
http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2007/05/unified-explanation-of-american-scheme.html
Accessed 1 February 2010.
Missing Links. 29 June 2007. “Next Question: Will Mubarak and the Saudi King Withstand American
Pressure on the Question of Hamas.”
http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html Accessed 12 December 2008.
Missing Links. 22 June 2007. “A Planned Result?”
http://arablinks.blogspot.com/2007/06/planned-result.html Accessed 2 February 2010.
Mitchell, J. W. T. 1999. “Landscape and Idolatry: Territory and Terror.” In The Landscape of
Palestine: Equivocal Poetry Ibrahim Abu Lughod et al (eds.). Birzeit: Birzeit University
Publications. Pp. 235- 252.
Morris, Benny. 1987. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–9. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Muslih, Muhammed. 1988. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia Press.
Majdalani, A. 2007. “The Serious Threats Facing the Palestinian National Project.” Palestine-Israel
Journal 14 (2): 37- 42.
Mignolo, Walter. 1995. The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Mignolo, Walter.2005. The Idea of Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. 1992. “The Concept of Jihad and the Palestinian Islamic Movement: A
Comparison of Ideas and Techniques.” BRIJMES 19 (1): 48-53.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. 1996. Islamic Politics in Palestine. London: Tauris.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. 2004. “Hamas after Shaykh Yasin and Rantisi.” Journal of Palestine
Studies 33 (4): 21-38.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley. 2005. “Prepared for Power: Hamas, Governance and Conflict.” Civil Wars
7 (4): 311 – 329.
Milton-Edwards, Beverley and Crooke, Alistair. 2004. “Elusive Ingrediants: Hamas and the Peace
Process.” Journal of Palestine Studies 33 (4): 39–52.
Monmonier, Mark. 1991. How to Lie with Maps. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Myre, Greg. 27 May 2003. “Sharon Defends Peace Plan Against Critics in Likud.” New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html Accessed 8
February 2010.
Nandy, A. 1995. “History's Forgotten Doubles.” History and Theory 34 (2): 44-66.
Nassar, I. 2002. “Reflections on Writing the History of Palestinian Identity.” Palestine-Israel Journal
of Politics 8-9: 24-37.
93
Nassar, Jamal and Peacock, Roger. 1990. Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads. New York: Praeger.
Nelson, Arthur. “Inside a Failed Palestinian Police State?” 26 February 2008.
http://www.tonykaron.com/2008/02/26/inside-a-failed-palestinian-police-state/ Accessed 12
December 2008.
Nettler, Ronald. 1994. “A Modern Islamic Confession of Faith and Conception of Religion: Sayyid
Qutb’s Introduction to the Tafsir fi Zilal al-Qur’an.” British Journal of Middle Eastern
Studies 2 (1): 102-14.
New York Times. June 18, 2007. “U.S. Unfreezes Millions in Aid to Palestinians.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/19/world/middleeast/19diplo.html?hp Accessed 8
December 8, 2008.
Nissenbaum, Dion. 20 June 2007. “Fatah's Last Stand: Collapse or Conspiracy?” McClatchy
Newspapers.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/v-print/story/17136.html Accessed 2 February 2010.
Nora, Pierre. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire.” Representation 26: 7-25.
NPR. 23 August 2005. “Palestinians Face New Power Struggle.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=4812646 Accessed 9
December 2008.
Nuesse, Andrea. 1998. Muslim Palestine- The Ideology of Hamas. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic
Publishers.
The Observer. 24 June 2007. “Hamas War Chief Reveals his Plans for Gaza Peace.”
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2109951,00.html Accessed 12 December 2008.
OCHA. “Occupied Palestinian Territory: Barrier Maps.”
http://www.ochaopt.org/?module=displaysection&section_id=108&format=html&edition_id
= Accessed 2 February 2010.
Ong, Aihwa. 2006. Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Durham:
Duke University Press.
Otto, Dianne. 1996. “Subalternity and International Law: The Problems of Global Community and the
Incommensurability of Difference.” Social & Legal Studies 5 (3): 337- 364.
Pahuja, Sundhya. 2005. “The Postcoloniality of International Law.” Harvard International Law
Journal 46 (2): 459-469.
Pahuja, Sundhya and Buchanan, Ruth. 2004. “Law, Nation and (Imagined) International
Communities.” Law Text Culture 8: 137- 166.
The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and B’Tselem. 1996. “Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories: Since the Oslo Accords: Status Report.” December. Jerusalem: The
Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and B’Tselem.
Palestine’s Dialogue Forum. 29 February 2008. “Mn Ajl Nasrit Alhabeeb.”
http://www.paldf.net/forum/showthread.php?t=225991 Accessed 8 February 2010.
Paltrade. 12 July 2007. “Border Closures: Effect on Private Sector in Gaza.”
www.paltrade.org/cms/images/.../PSCC%20presentation%202007.07.pdf Accessed 9
February.
Paltrade. 12 February 2008. “Gaza Terminals Movement Monitoring: 2007 Annual Report.”
http://www.paltrade.org/cms/publications.php?id=99 Accessed 9 February.
Paltrade. 20 December 2009. “Crossings: Bi-Monthly Monitoring Report.”
http://www.paltrade.org/cms/publications.php?id=168 Accessed 9 February.
Pappe, Ilan. 2004. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Pappe, Ilan. 2006. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford: Oneworld.
Parsons, Nigel. 2004. The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to Al-Aqsa. New York:
Routledge.
Passia. June 2008. “Bulleting: Gaza.”
www.passia.org/publications/bulletins/gaza/pdf/GAZA%206.pdf Accessed 27 December
2009.
94
Peteet, Julie. 1996. “The Writing on the Walls: The Graffiti of the Intifada.” Cultural Anthropology
11 (2): 139-159.
Peteet, Julie. 2005. "Words as Interventions: Naming in the Palestine-Israel Conflict " Third World
Quarterly 26:153-172.
Petti, Alessandro. “Spaces of Suspantion: The Camp Experiment and the Contemporary City.”
Unpublished Article.
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1968. Political Power and Social Classes. London: Humanities Press.
Prevost, Gary. 2006. “The Evolution of the African National Congress in Power: From
Revolutionaries to Social Democrats.” Politikon 3 (2): 163-181.
PNA. 2009. “Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State, Program of the Thirteenth
Government.” August.
Qutb, Sayyid. 1989. Ma ʻālim fī al-tarīq. Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq.
Rabinowitz, Dan. 2000. “Postnational Palestine/Israel? Globalization, Diaspora, Transnationalism,
and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” Critical Inquiry 26 (4): 757-772.
Rajan, R. S. 2003. The Scandal of the State: Women, Law and Citizenship in Postcolonial India.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Ravid, Barak and Shamir, Shlomo and Issacharoff, Avi. 20 September 2007. “Cabinet Declares Gaza
‘Hostile Territory.’” Haaretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/905561.html Accessed 27 December 2009.
Reuters. 14 October 2006 “U.S. Begins $42 Million Program to Bolster Hamas Opponents.”
Haaretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/774570.html Accessed 12 December 2008.
Reuters. 10 April 2007. “Congress Okays $59m in U.S. Funds for Abbas' Security Forces.”
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/873266.html Accessed 31 January 2010.
Reuters. 17 June 2007. “Interview: Hamas Could Strike in West Bank- Abbas Adviser.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUSMAC947669._CH_.2400 Accessed 12
December 2008.
Rizk, Philip. 9 September 2008. “Gaza's Tunnel Economy Stumbles.” Aljazeera.
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2008/09/2008999272950161.html Accessed 9 February.
Road Map. 30 April 2003. “The Road Map: A Performance-based Roadmap to a Permanent TwoState Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2989783.stm Accessed 8 February 2010.
Roy, Sara. 1987. “The Gaza Strip: A Case of Economic De-Development.” Journal of Palestine
Studies 17 (1): 56-88.
Roy, Sara. 1993. “Gaza: New Dynamics of Civic Disintegration.” Journal of Palestine Studies 22 (4):
20-31.
Roy, Sara. 1995. The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development. Washington D. C.:
Institute for Palestine Studies.
Roy, Sara. 1999. “De-development Revisited: Palestinian Economy and Society Since Oslo.” Journal
of Palestine Studies 28 (3): 64-82.
Rogers, Lynne. 1999. “Literary Snapshots: Mark Twains Innocents Abroad and William Thackeray’s
Note of A Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo.” In The Landscape of Palestine: Equivocal
Poetry. Ibrahim Abu Lughod et al (eds.). Birzeit: Birzeit University Publications. Pp. 161174.
Rose, Deborah B. 2008. “On History, Trees, and Ethical Proximity.” Postcolonial Studies 11: 157167.
Robinson, Glenn E. 1997. Building a Palestinian State. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Saba, Mahmood. 2007. The Politics of Piety: the Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Said, Edward. 1989. “Intifada and Independence.” In Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against
Israeli Occupation. Lockman, Zachary and Beinin, Joel (eds.). Boston: South End Press. Pp.
5- 25.
95
Said, Edward. 1994. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
Said, Edward. 1995. The Politics of Dispossession: the Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination.
1969-1994. New York: Vintage.
Said, Edward. 1996. Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace
Process. New York: Vintage.
Said, Edward. 1999. “Palestine, Memory, Invention and Space.” In The Landscape of Palestine:
Equivocal Poetry. Ibrahim Abu Lughod et al (eds.). Birzeit: Birzeit University Publications.
Pp. 3-22.
Said, Edward. 2002. “Nationalism, Secularism, Postcoloniality: An Interview with Edward Said.
Hussein Ibish.” Cultural Dynamics 14: 97- 105.
Saussure, Ferdinand. 1983. Course in General Linguistics. LaSalle: Open Court.
Sayigh, Rosemary. 1979. Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries. London: Zed Press.
Sayigh, Yezid. 1997. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement
1949-1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Segev, Tom. 1991. The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt.
Shiblik, Abbas. 1997. “Palestinians in Lebanon and the PLO.” Journal of Refugee Studies 10 (3):
261- 274.
Sofer, Ronny. 31 May 2007. “Lieberman: Declare Gaza Hostile Political Entity.” Ynet News.
http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3406842,00.html Accessed 27 December
2009.
Shryock, Andrew. 1996. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual
Authority in Tribal Jordan. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Silverstein, K. 29 October 2009. “Six Questions for Desmond Travers on the Goldstone Report.”
Harpers Magazine.
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/10/hbc-90006003 Accessed 9 November 2009.
Stateless Nation.
http://www.statelessnation.org/ Accessed 2 February 2010.
Swedenburg, Ted. 2003. Memories of Revolt: 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past.
Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.
Swedenburg, Ted. 1990. “The Palestinian Peasant as National Signifier.” Anthropological Quarterly
63 (1): 18-30.
Sayer, Derek. 1994. “Everyday Forms of State Formation: Some Dissident Remarks on ‘Hegemony.’”
In Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern
Mexico. Gilbert, Jospeh and Nugent, Daniel (eds.). Durham: Duke University Press. Pp. 367379.
Shlaim, Avi. 1990. “The Rise and Fall of the All-Palestine Government in Gaza.” Journal of
Palestine Studies 20 (1): 37-53.
Sharp, Gene. 1989. “The Intifadah and Nonviolent Struggle.” Journal of Palestine Studies 19 (1): 313.
Sharp, Gene. 1990. The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle. Monograph Series Number 3. Boston:
The Albert Einstein Institution.
Sharon, Ariel. 2005. Warrior: An Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Shikaki, Khalil. 2002. “Palestinians Divided.” Foreign Relations 81 (1): 89- 105.
Strawson, John. 1998a. “Palestine's Basic Law: Constituting New Identities Through Liberating Legal
Culture.” Loyola of Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Journal 411: 1- 19.
Strawson, John. 1998b. “Netanyahu's Oslo: Peace in the Slow Lane.” Soundings Issue 8: 49- 60.
Strawson, John. 2002. “Reflections on Edward Said and the Legal Narratives of Palestine: Israeli
Settlements and Palestinian Self-Determination.” Penn State International Law Review 20
(2): 363- 385.
Strawson, John. 2004. “Review: ‘Universalising International Law’ by Christopher Weeramantry.”
Melbourne Journal International Law 22 (5).
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/MelbJIL/2004/22.html#fnB21 Accessed 16 January
2010.
96
Shehadeh, Raja. 1982. The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank. Jerusalem: Adam Books.
Shehadeh, Raja. 2007. Palestinian Walks, Forays into A Vanishing Landscape. New York: Scribner.
Shahak, Israel. 1993. “The Oslo Accords: Interpreting Israel’s Intentions.” Middle East International
22: 17-18.
Scott, James. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have
Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sternhell, Zeev. 1998. The Founding Myths of Israel. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Shammas, Anton. 2005. “A Lost Voice.” New York Times Magazine. 28 April 1991.
Shammas, Anton. 1988. Arabesque. New York : Harper & Row.
Shammas, Anton. 1996. “Autocartography.” In The Geography of Identity. Yaeger, Patricia (ed.). Ann
Arbor: Michigan University Press. Pp. 466- 475.
Tibi, Bassam. 1997. Arab Nationalism: Between Islam and the Nation-State. New York: St. Martin's
Press.
Tamari, Salim. 1990a. “Eyeless in Judea: Israel's Strategy of Collaborators and Forgeries.” Middle
East Report 164/165: 39-45.
Tamari, Salim. 1990c. “The Revolt of the Petite Bourgeoisie: Urban Merchants and the Palestinian
Uprising.” In Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, Nassar, Jamal and Peacock, Roger (eds.).
New York: Praeger. Pp. 159- 174.
Tamari, Salim. 1991. “The Palestinian Movement in Transition: Historical Reversals and the
Uprising.” In Echoes of the Intifada: Regional Repercussions of the Palestinian-Israeli
Conflict Brynen, Rex (ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.
Tamari, Salim. 2002. “Who Rules Palestine?” Journal of Palestine Studies 31 (4): 102-113.
This is Rafah.
http://rafah.hackitectura.net/es/ Accessed 23 May 2009.
Tilley, Virginia. 19 November 2009. “Bantustans and the Unilateral Declaration of Statehood.” The
Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10901.shtml Accessed 21 November 2009.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1990. Haiti: State Against Nation: The Origins and Legacy of Duvalierism.
New York: Monthly Review Press.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 1995. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2001. “The Anthropology of State in an Age of Globalization.” Current
Anthropology 42 (1): 125- 138.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2003. Global Transformations: Anthropology and the Modern World. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Trigger, B. 1984. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist.” MAN 19: 355-70.
Usher, Graham. 1995. Palestine In Crisis. London: Pluto Press.
Usher, Graham. 1996. “The Politics of Internal Security: The PA's New Intelligence Services.”
Journal of Palestine Studies 25 (2): 21-34.
Usher, Graham. 2000. “Fatah’s Tanzim: Origins and Politics.” Middle East Report 217: 6-7.
Usher, Graham. 21 August 2005. “The New Hamas: Between Resistance and Participation.” MERIP.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero082105.html Accessed 11 December 2009.
Virno, Paolo. 2004. A Grammar of the Multitude. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Vitullo, Anita. 1989. “Uprising in Gaza.” In Lockman, Zachary and Beinin, Joel (eds.). Intifada: The
Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation. Boston: South End Press. Pp. 43- 56.
Weinberger, Naomi. 1995. “The Palestinian National Security Debate.” Journal of Palestine Studies
24 (3): 16-30.
Weiss, Efrat. 28 September 2005. “IAF Renews Air Strikes in Gaza.” Ynet News.
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3148619,00.html Accessed 2 February 2010.
Weizman, Eyal. 2006. “The Architecture of Ariel Sharon.” Third Text 20 (3/4): 337–353.
Weizman, Eyal. 2007. Hollow Lands. London: Verso.
Weizman, Eyal. 1 March 2009. “Lawfare in Gaza: Legislative Attack.” Open Democracy.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/legislative-attack Accessed 20 May 2009.
97
White, Ben. “Will Fatah- as Much as Israel- Be the Target of the Next Intifada?” 14 October 2009
http://conflictsforum.org/2009/will-fatah-%E2%80%93-as-much-as-israel-%E2%80%93-bethe-target-of-the-next-intifada/#back16 Accessed 17 October 2009.
White, Hayden. 1990. “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory.” In The
Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press. Pp. 26-57.
Whitelam, Keith. 1996. The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History.
London: Routledge.
Whitefield, P. 1998. New Found Lands: Maps in the History of Exploration. London: The British
Library.
Wilson, Heather. 1990. International Law and the Use of Force By Liberation Movements. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Wilson, Richard. 2001. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation South Africa: Legitimizing the PostApartheid State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yad Vashem. 2010. “The Untold Stories: The Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of
the Former USSR.”
http://www1.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/index.html Accessed 2 February 2010.
Yaeger, Patricia. 1996. “Introduction: Narrating Space.” In The Geography of Identity. Yaeger,
Patricia (ed.). Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.
Yousef, Ahmed. 20 June 2007. “Engage With Hamas- We Earned Our Support.” Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/19/AR2007061901736.html
Accessed 2 February 2010.
Zahhar, Mahmud and Hijazi, Hussein. 1995. “Hamas: Waiting for Secular Nationalism to SelfDestruct. An Interview with Mahmud Zahhar.” Journal of Palestine Studies 24 (3): 81-88.
Zoellick, Robert. 2003. “Zoellick on Global Trade and the Middle East.” Washington File.
http://usinfo.org/wf-archive/2003/030623/epf106.htm Accessed 16 January 2010.
Zureik, Elia. 2001. “Constructing Palestine Through Surveillance Practices.” British Journal of
Middle Eastern Studies 28 (2): 205-227.
Interviews:
Abu Karim, interview with author, 17 June 2007. Gaza City.
Abu Karim, interview with author, 11 January 2008. Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
Abu Shady, interview by author, 2 June 2007. Gaza City.
Amr, interview with author, 1 June 2007. Gaza City.
Anwar, interview with author, 1 January 2008. Gaza City.
el-Baraka, Sayed, interview with author, 12 July 2008. Gaza City.
Eouda, Dr Ghazi, interview with author, 17 July 2007. Beit Lahya, Gaza.
Hamamreh, N. and J., interview with author, 25 June 2008. Bethlehem.
Hassan, interview with author, 1 June 2007. Gaza City.
Ibrahim, interview with author, 29 November 2008. Cairo, Egypt.
Jumea, Subheya, interview with author, 22 January 2008. Gaza City.
Kafarna, Ayman, Interview with author, 9 January 2008. Beit Hanoun, Gaza.
Khalaf, interview with author, 11 January 2008. Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
Khaled, interview with author, 17 June 2007. Deir el-Balah, Gaza.
Mostafa, interview with author, 9 July 2009. Ramallah.
Nasir, interview by author, 2 June 2007. Gaza City.
Raed, interview with author, 9 July 2009. Ramallah.
el-Sarraj, Dr Iyad, interview with author, 24 January 2008. Gaza City.
Tito, Mohamed, interview with author, 28 March 2007. Jabalya Refugee Camp, Gaza.
Yusef and Younis, interview with author, 17 January 2008. Jabalya Refugee Camp, Gaza.
98
el-Zaeem, Sharhabeel, interview with author, 21 January 2008. Gaza City.
el-Zahhar, Mahmoud, interview with author, 21 July 2007. Gaza City.
99